Boat Work!

Jun 6, 2019
3 min read

This is a randomly different blog-post to my usual ones, but something I simply wanted to share…

While many landlubbers imagine that being a sailing cruiser is all about lying in a hammock strung between coconut palms and having someone coming to put a rum and coke into your hand while you watch the sunset from the white-sand beach, the truth is quite different! Put simply, there is a lot of compromise involved, a lot of adaptation, and certainly a fair share of work, sometimes intensive, in order to see all the amazing things one sees, get to those inaccessible places that most mortals will never reach, and experience those rare and moving things that money can’t buy.

Returning to the boat this year inevitably meant that there was plenty to do aboard to get her in shape for sailing, and especially the offshore sailing that we were planning. Amongst many other smaller projects, I handled two sewing jobs, with the faithful aid of my new sewing machine, bought for the purpose. Most sailors would have skilled work like this done by a professional, and at huge expense, but I am fortunate enough to have great sewing abilities and, even weighing the cost of the machine and the professional rates against each other, I was able to save the boat a large amount of money even if considering these two projects alone.

The first big sewing project I undertook was the interior upholstery. The old cushions, covered in a kind of fake leather, were all on the point of spontaneously falling apart, so I searched high and low to find quality textiles that, for me at least, struck a balance between practicality, classiness and fun. This is what I came up with: fish!… and some sort of fish-scaly water!

A couple of weeks of wrestling with foam, zips, the delicacies of precise, small shapes set amongst well-measured, long seams, backings and stuffings… sixteen cushions later the boat had a new interior.

Seizing the moment (whilst I had a the luxury of a workroom ashore, thanks to friends), I tackled the large exterior need as well: the dodger, for which was chosen an positively enlightening yellow colour (here pictured with the removable black shade screen on).

This weather shield which protects the cockpit area of the boat is perhaps the most demanding sewing job I have ever done in a lifetime of sewing many, many things. There can be no pattern, because each boat is unique, the tension of the panels is paramount, and the windows, bindings and other features are relatively complex and must be positioned exactly. Not even professionals who do this all year long get a dodger absolutely right first time usually: for me there were plenty of ‘fittings’ and ‘re-fittings’ before I was able to finally attached the snap fasteners and assemble it once and for all as part of the boat.

One of the extremely useful (and also satisfying) aspects of making things for oneself is that they can be custom made to one’s own desires and ideas. The dodger was no exception in this, and I incorporated features which we dreamed up ourselves, including, for instance, small, rolling vent windows in the main window for those hot days at anchor in the tropics.

Apart from saving money and refining the usability and beauty of something by making it myself, there is an overriding joy for me in the way that the threads of a story create themselves around the slow work, and then the finished item embodies the story. Assembling materials and tools to make the dodger involved consulting with different people, asking advice, borrowing the odd tool, using given or recycled things (which come with their own stories and accompanying relationships), using my friends’ downstairs room for weeks and thus knowing them newly and freshly (and the birds in their garden, and their neighbour…). A really terrific boating couple I know who sold their boat and moved back ashore (not without tears I think) gave me some of their boating bits and bobs that they’ll never use again, and I have such a sense of deep satisfaction that their successful and adventurous sailing years have somehow trickled down to live on through my new dodger: I reworked their leather scraps to reinforce sections of my dodger. I will remember them in a more, can I say, present way (can one remember the present?), which is just lovely.

So, amongst others, my especial thanks to Ellen and George, Michael and Barbara, canvasworker Steve and, of course, Dean. And here are larger size photos, with a couple of extras.

Upholstery: