Grand Designs mark II

Sometimes it takes two goes to get something right. Just ask Spacex!

Three years ago we made a rain cover for Herbie's side hatch doors. Here it is:

Good quality waterproof fabric with the cunning ruse of sewing magnets into the border seams.  

It worked a treat and cured the leaks of rainwater we were previously getting from the edges of the doors. It was simple to attach and remove too.

Then in sometime in the winter of 2023 it disappeared, presumably ripped off by one of the winter gales. So we're going to make another, still using magnets on the sides and at the bottom, but this time Ime going to use eyelets and turn buttons at the top.

The water proof fabric did what it said on the tin and was not expensive so we'll use the same.

This is all a pretty simple job, but we fancy having a crack at another, more ambitious, mark II.

The tonneau cover over the rear deck.

We did inherit one when we bought Herbie and it stood in good stead for some years. However it had one crucial fault. Puddles of rain would collect on top of it. Then in the winter of 2019 the puddle got so big that when I baled it out with a saucepan I calculated that the water weighed a hundredweight!

As you can see the poor old tonneau cover was stretched mightily and not long after that, after more heavy rain, it catastrophically tore apart. I vowed at the time that if we got or made another, we would rig up some sort of ridge pole so that the water would run off the sides rather than collect in the middle.  We still have hooks on the side of the boat to secure the bungee chords and there are some turn buttons on the roof just forward of the rear hatch, so that's our starting point.  

The difficult bit is going to be getting the geometry right and our plan is to bodge up a template using an old sheet which we can drape in situ and then tailor to fit.  I can put a bracket on the hatch lid to hold one end of the ridge pole but I'm not sure yet about supporting the other end. maybe some supporting A frame or simply a 'tent pole' standing on the deck. Hmmm, I could I suppose make a slat across the rear deck with a hole in it to locate the foot of the tent pole.  (I'm thinking as I write here folks!).  Actually I have a few old tent poles in the shed at home. I'll have a rummage and see what I can find.  See, this is one benefit of writing things down in a blog post; it gives you ideas.

Kath of course will be the sewmeister with her trusty sewing machine. One problem is that the fabric can't be bought wide enough to do the job without a seam, but having been campers for many years, we now about seam sealants so I'm sure we can amange that.

Stay tuned, but don't hold your breath. This looks like a non trivial task and could take some time.  There might well end up being a mark III before we get it right.