Sea Hood: A Little More Canvas Work

 Way back in 2004 when we had Barrett Enclosures in Seattle make new cockpit canvas for Eolian, they produced the dodger as a single, complex piece of canvas consisting of three major pieces, all sewn together:

• The "windshield" portion that provides the forward view,
• the "roof" which covers the space between the first and second bows and provides shelter when the sliding hatch is opened, and
• the sea hood, which covers the sliding hatch, preventing rain and spray (and boarding waves...) from entering the cabin around the sliding hatch.

When I redid all the horizontal cockpit canvas, I made a new roof piece.  To install it, I cut the original roof piece off and made the new roof attach to the top of the windshield with a row of Common Sense fasteners:

 Well now it was time to replace the sea hood portion.  I had two choices for the connection to the windshield, since I had no intention of sewing it directly to the windshield:

• Create a flange on the aft edge of the new sea hood that will lay in front of the windshield.  This would do well at shedding boarding seas.
• Create a flange on the aft edge of the new sea hood that will lay behind (inside) the windshield.  This would do well at shedding rain.

Given that the necessity of shedding rain far, far, far outweighs the need to shed boarding seas (center cockpit boats are great!), I selected Option 2.   And once again, it is attached with a row of Common Sense fasteners. 

 

This arrangement has gotten an acid test with this year's November storms, one after the other, with 50 kt winds - it is working great!

Sea Hood: A Little More Canvas Work