Living on board a boat, or I imagine any rudimentary shelter, certainly puts you close to nature. This past month or so has seen almost constant strong winds and heavy rain batter much of Britain. And when it hasn’t been raining the winds have shifted to the East bringing very cold air with it. Our mooring here at Mylor is pretty well sheltered, except when the wind is in the East. Any blow from the East blasts us stern on and gives us little chance for sleep. We have spent a lot of time tying off our halyards and rigging lines to prevent noises, but there is one noise we cannot seem to eliminate. I think it’s coming from one of the rigging lines on the mizzen mast striking the radome, but there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s so frustrating because it seems that the only place you can hear the noise is in our cabin…..and mainly at night!
Anyway, we have survived pretty well and
there has been little damage done. One
thing that has not faired so well is the wheelhouse spray cover. There are a couple of areas where the
material has chafed through and the canvas has torn around one of the
fasteners. These were minor concerns,
but then one of the zips became torn which prompted me to do something.
Like with the Eberspacher of my last post, I
like to have a go at repairing things if I can.
Not only does this save money but it also gives me the opportunity to
understand how things work and learn new skills. Now needlework has never been my strongpoint
(in fact it wouldn’t even rank as a weak point in my life!) I also heard that replacing zips is a
specialist task and needed an industrial sewing machine to do it. But then I discovered the Speedy Stitcher®
sewing awl. A quick look at YouTube and
a bit of online shopping and I had assembled the necessary bits to have a go.
Now, I wouldn’t say it was easy, and I
certainly won’t be challenging for first place in any needlework competitions,
but I think I have done a reasonable job.
I decided to only replace one side of the zip as the replacement zip was
an exact match for the original. That
saved me from having to run another two lines of stitching. The wind was blowing quite strong and there
was rain threatening, so I didn’t remove the canopy from the frame.
In hindsight it would have been better to lay
the canvas on a flat surface but I didn’t really have that option. By the time I had done the one half my hands
were pretty sore and I had managed to stab myself twice. But I have to say that the Speedy Stitcher®
was a really useful tool and made the job so much easier.
By doing this repair I have managed to save a fair bit of money and give the spray cover a little longer. I think we will inevitably have to replace it sometime in the future, but hopefully not too soon. I plan to put some additional struts onto the frame to keep the roof part taught as it tends to collect rainwater. But that's for another day.
Take care everyone!
