Tag: canvas

Sails, Sewing11 Comments

No Furler? Make a Foredeck Sail Bag

$tingy Sailor

If you have a headsail furler on your sailboat, this project will probably be of little interest to you. But if you have hank-on headsails and want convenient protection for them like the sacrificial covers on furled headsails, read on.

A foredeck sail bag is something of a luxury for the trailer sailor. It’s not necessary to sail and unless you spend considerable time with the headsail doused, it’s not of much use to a trailer sailor. But if you like to cover your sails overnight or if you keep your sailboat in a slip and you don’t want to remove and stow the headsail during that time, a foredeck sail bag can be handy and save you setup time.

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Cockpit/stern, Sewing1 Comment

Make Your Own Lifeline Cushions

$tingy Sailor

This is a quick, easy, and cheap project if you have any scraps of canvas left over from earlier canvaswork projects. Lifeline cushions are tubular foam with canvas covers that fit over the lifelines that run along the sides of the cockpit. They’re great as headrests when laying back in the cockpit seats while you check your Windex or just watch the clouds roll by. They also make sitting on top of the coamings more comfortable if you want to hike out a bit when heeled on a reach.

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Sails, Sewing3 Comments

How to Make a Mainsail Cover

$tingy Sailor

Summer Dance didn’t have much in the way of canvaswork when we bought her: an original mainsail cover and an old outboard engine cover that also looked pretty ghetto. Besides being 1980’s brown in color, the canvas of the mainsail cover was faded and shredded in places, much of the stitching had disintegrated, and the zipper had come almost completely loose. It was unsalvageable but it did work as a pattern to sew a new cover out of Sunbrella, the gold standard of marine canvas.

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Sew Your Own Winch Covers From Scraps

$tingy Sailor

Do you keep your lovingly maintained sailboat in a slip or on a mooring ball but want to protect your hard work from the elements as much as possible? Covers on your winches can protect the plated parts from corrosion, plastic parts from UV damage, bearings and pawls from rainwater and salt water spray, and keep them cleaner if bird droppings are a problem for you.

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Cockpit/stern, Sewing4 Comments

Make This Companionway Hatch Cover In Under a Day

$tingy Sailor

If you leave your sailboat exposed to the elements for long periods of time or if you just want to keep your brightwork bright, it helps to cover the main hatch to reduce damage from UV rays, rain and snow, and bird droppings. Making one isn’t hard and you can do it in less than a day with about a yard of canvas, depending on the size of your hatch.

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How to Add Coachwhipping to Your Tiller Handle

$tingy Sailor

Want to add a decorative grip to the handle of your tiller? It’s not hard to do in a couple of hours and almost free with a few scraps of canvas and/or cord you may have lying around.

Coachwhipping is one of those little touches you can add to your sailboat to give it a more old-school, handcrafted look. It harkens back to a time when sailboats were made almost entirely out of wood and lashing parts together with rope was the norm. It’s a nice contrast to all the sterile fiberglass and stainless steel used on modern yachts and boosts your seaworthy credibility (or at least gives that illusion). Learning the knots and braids is fun. It’s a great way to spend time on a cold winter evening near the wood stove while the snow is falling.

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