Looking at ugly

With the Sailrite acting right once again, yesterday dawned as the day to finally put the bimini build to rest. Two tasks remained. One was to add binding at the zippers. The second involved adding four Velcro sleeves to help hold the cover in place at both sides of the two inner frame bows. The zipper pockets holding the Bimini top to those loops, as originally designed, stopped at the edge of the solar panel mounts.  This left some exposed tubing that was unsightly. The design also allowed the edge of the bimini to fluff in the wind.

Replacing the bimini cover was a project sparked by adding the third panel. The short zipper pockets were chosen because mounts to the support rails for the solar panels were in the way of a normal design. The old cover simply wouldn't work anymore, meaning we were designing a new one "on the fly", one of some complex geometry to work around the mounts. There was always some question as to the short pockets working out, but there was no way to tell without giving them a try. The project was a bit like assembling a puzzle: try it, change it, finish it.

Bound edges of the zippers

The Velcro sleeves would be an "after market" kind of fix.  Not preferable, but better than starting over.  In any case a couple of hours of work would see it done. Sundowners in the shaded cockpit would finish off the day in style. Adding the binding was mostly for aesthetics, though it did add a second seam to help support the zippers. Doing them was kind of fun, though it turns out long runs of straight line stitching chews through bobbins like mad. Ah, but the sleeves…the sleeves turned into another thing.

Positioning Velcro sleeves where they butted up against the zipper pockets would be hard, nor would they support the edge of the Bimini as much as was needed. Worst of all they would be flat out ugly. The idea of spending hours sitting the cockpit staring at ugly chaffed. There was much debate but in the end only one course of action would be acceptable, remove the original zipper pockets and replace them with ones that reached all the way to the edge of the Bimini.  It wasn't a total "start over" but it wouldn't be an easy "fix" either.  The first step would be removing the original pockets, zippers, and binding.

Zipper access at each solar panel mount covered with flaps to protect from the sun

A lock stitch is when reverse is used on the sewing machine to overrun the start and end of a line of stitches. This locks them in place by, basically, tangling the thread into a tight little knot in a visually pleasing manor. Since a lock stitch is also used at each end of a sewing “ops”, novice machine operators, like yours truly, use many such stitches. Alas, such stitches make UN-stitching, shall we say, tedious.

The time to enjoy sundowners in the shaded cockpit passed unnoticed as just-installed parts of the bimini top were teased away from the underlying fabric so as not to leave any scars. More time passed as new parts were cut and placed. There was talk of calling it a day and finishing the build come morning, but a kind of frenzy had infested Kintala. This was the twelfth day being absorbed by this project. This was the last project keeping us pinned to the dock. It had to be finished. And it had to be finished NOW.

Backstay access via zipper and drawstring cone to keep
the water from dripping on our heads

Deb started trading off stretches at the machine with me to keep things going. Mistakes were made, undone, then redone. A head lamp was put into play so tired and aging eyes could see the stitching lines run under the walking foot. The last chalk lines drawn during the next to last fitting of the Bimini were done under flashlight. Eventually more stitches went in than came out and at 2300 hours on day twelve of the Bimini build the cover was stretched over the frame for the last time.

The day started out in style, sipping coffee in the shaded cockpit.

Backstay access zipper and drawstring cone from the top.

And not looking at ugly.

The finished project. Oh, and Brian and Mizzy's Hylas 46 is anchored in the background. They're here for a visit.

Solar panel mount bars at the forward edge of the cockpit.

Leather chafe guards for the supports.

Our newly added center support bars to help support the forward weight of the solar panels.

We left the old solar panel wire installed because we intend to mount some sort of cockpit light there.

I can fix that for you... Brian Jansing / Matt Borden

It was a slow start to the day. The Sailrite machine was suffering a case of the blues and, as a result, so was I. Once in a while a person just gets tired of rowing against the tide. Trying to get this summer's work finished so we could get back to our cruising life was starting to to feel a bit like rowing against a very strong and persistent tide. Though we really have been making progress, it wasn't feeling that way.

With my morning coffee mostly downed, and with no good excuse not to get with the program, I called the help line at Sailrite to try and get a handle on this latest set-back. A Mr. Brian Jansing had sent us yesterday's email on possible fixes, and the young lady who answered the phone connected us right up. After a short conversation Brian suggested I had already gone further into the machine than he could follow, wrote up a report, and sent in on to the tech department with our contact information. Normally I would consider that the dead end of doom when dealing with a customer service department, the internet equivalent of “the check is in the mail.” It didn't do much to cure my blues.

However, in just a couple of minutes an email landed in the inbox from a Mr. Matt Borden. Matt has helped Deb before, and has been a big help to our friend Nancy, another seamstress who works her machine pretty hard. Matt included links to two Sailrite training videos that he felt would address our problems. One of them was spot-on in fixing the walking foot / feed problem. The other got me 90% of the way to getting the upper thread tension problem solved. A second round of emails, again answered within minutes, helped me clear that last 10%. A touch of super glue in just the right spot, reassembly, and all is now well in the Sailrite world aboard Kintala. The only disappointment is that we didn't figure this stuff out a week ago. It turns out we have been struggling with a badly misbehaving machine, one that compromised the work on the new Bimini top more than we realized. It also didn't make my learning curve any easier. None of this was Sailrite's fault.  We didn't contact them until yesterday afternoon when the machine quit working altogether.

All told, from the first conversation this morning to having the machine singing along, was less than two hours.  It is sewing big wads of canvas together with an easy shrug, all the frustrations of the last couple of days have simply melted away. 

Perfect stitches through 8 layers of fabric. Yay!

In our experience Sailrite stands as the example the rest of the Marine Industry should use as a standard. Not only for support and customer service, but as the measure of building a good piece of equipment in the first place. If sailboat manufacturers were half as good, all of us would spend and lot more time cruising and a lot less time fixing.

And that would fix my blues for well and for good.

To be determined

We had a Skype conversation with 5 of the nine grand kids this morning. One is too young to say much more than “Ba”, though she manages to say a lot with just one word. One was jumping wildly around, in and out of the shot like a blur. One told us a train story and showed us presents from his recent birthday. One also showed presents from a not quite as recent birthday. And the oldest didn't say much as she tried to ride herd on her younger siblings. Any day that starts with a Skype visit from grand kids is a good day … no matter what happens later.

“Later” was supposed to be finishing up the Bimini project. We are within a day of putting that last, big, summer project to rest. With it done, Kintala will be near ready to go. Just some routine engine maintenance and a rigging inspection will stand between our old Tartan and open water.

The rigging inspection is a quality control tic left over from my aviation days. The rigging was done here two years ago, has seen about 4000 miles of use, and endured a few pretty good tussles with winds in excess of 50 knots. It looks okay to me but the essence of quality control is to have a second, preferably more knowledgeable, person look at the same thing for the sole purpose of finding discrepancies. Since a rig failure is the one kind of equipment malfunction that will stop a sailboat from being a sailboat, a little quality control aloft seems like a good idea. And this is a good place to get one done.

Alas, “later” saw the Bimini project sidetracked by a different kind of equipment failure. Deb's magic box of a Sailrite Machine, the one that stitches big wads of canvas together with a shrug, has stopped stitching. It hums a whirls and does all the things that a sewing machine should do, cloth moves, thread flies, but the result is an ugly line of loops and unfinished knots holding nothing together. The fact that I don't know much about a machine has never stopped me from taking one apart. I can't break it if its already broke and, eventually, the broken part in the sewing machine gave itself away. But it was too late in the day to get parts, even if such parts can be gotten at all. We have bought a couple of parts from Sailrite, parts they know get worn out and are designed to be changed. The bit that broke on ours will not be that hard to change, but it doesn't look like one of those “routine” parts either. Sailrite often has people ship units back that need repaired. Something we likely can't get done before we need to head off.

What happens next is yet to be determined.  

Solo?

A pilot's first solo is a memorable event.  Mine was in Piper Cub a few weeks after my 16th birthday. Many hours of dual instruction went by before I first took to the sky on my own.  Memories of some fragments of that flight still float around in my brain, though it happened some 44 years ago.

I logged some dual hours on the Sailrite machine today. It would be nice to qualify as a pilot in command on that thing, but that is many hours of practice in the future. Filling up a bobbin, threading the machine, and actually stitching a seam is a pretty much the limit of my ability. Half the time I have no clue as to why I am doing what I am doing. Deb is in charge of design and fabrication. I am drone labor, laying down about 3 stitches per second. When Deb is in the Sailrite's pilot seat she just stomps down on the “go” peddle and fabric bits stick together like magic.

Which is to say that the Bimini project is moving along, but at a drastically reduced pace. I do have my moments. A small storm rolled through the marina this afternoon. I kept stitching right along even as the boat swayed, heeled, and bounced off her dock lines. I be hard core...arggggh.

After the storm we dried out the cockpit and did the first test fit of the raw cover. Patterned, cut, with the finished hems on the port and starboard edges, and the three main panels stitched together into one whole unit, there was enough done to see if it was anywhere near close to fitting. It looked pretty good, so tomorrow we drive on without having to back up much, yet.

One nice thing about canvas work is that the progress is out there to see. Where there was once just a roll of fabric there is now a thing that looks clearly like a Bimini top. Where there was once just an engine cover hiding the Beast, there is still just an engine cover hiding the Beast. Three days of hard work went on behind that cover and there is nothing to show for it. Three days of hard work have gone into the Bimini and there is a Bimini to show for it.

Something similar can be said about cruising in general. Back in my old life, even though I traveled thousands of miles a month, usually I was in the same spots doing the same things. Out here we anchor, moor, take a dock, and are rarely in the same place long. Summer work-fests are the exception and, even then, it is engine work one day, canvas work the next. There is wood working, electrical wiring, and Wednesday night sailing. Different people come and go off the end of the pier, anchored out to visit with Deb and I. We try new things, learn knew things, and see new things all the time.

It is a balance of course, all life is. In St. Louis and Indy the kids, and especially the grand kids, are trying new things, learning new things and seeing new things all the time also. Things we don't get to share with them. The first crawl, the first steps, the first words, the first missing tooth; we hear the stories after the fact. Someday though, maybe they will share some of our stories up close and first hand. Who will be the first grand kid to take the helm for a solo watch? Who will be the first to set the anchor or help me put in a reef?

Before that can happen Kintala has to find her way back to the ocean. Watching the Bimini take shape helps remind me that the day is getting nearer.   It may be only a few weeks away. Certainly it will happen long before I solo the Sailrite machine.

Foreplay

It's supposed to rain the next two days, so it seemed like a good idea to get the patterning done for the bimini re-skin project so we'd have something to do while we couldn't work outside. After finishing a very good cup of coffee (some things simply must come first),  I dug out the Dura-Skrim patterning plastic that's been occupying the aft berth for the last year, and rounded up the Sharpie, double-faced tape, scissors, measuring tape and hand tools. It was a bit hot to be working out in the sun all day, but we needed a windless day to work so the plastic would stay put. And sorry, I somehow forgot to take any pictures today so you'll just have to wait for the finished project.

The simple frame before the solar panel mounts

Making a bimini is very little about the sewing and very much about the preparation. You can't take enough time with this step. You place some strapping tape along the edges of your bimini bows where the finished fabric will lay. You place double-faced tape on the strapping tape. You lay out your plastic on the double-faced tape and stretch and pull and rearrange until you have a good, wrinkle-free facsimile of the finished bimini. Then you grab your Sharpie and begin to make copious notes about placements of zippers, zipper pockets, facings, tails, and backstay access. After you think you're all done, you walk away. You go pick up your favorite book or video game and think of something completely different for awhile so that when you come back an hour later, the thing you missed will slap you in the face. Or, if you're lucky like me, you have a really terrific work partner.

The solar panel mounts we have to work around with the fabric. We want the skin to be easily removable.

Tim and I have known each other for over 43 years now and we've worked on more projects together than I could possibly count. We had jobs in the same company for 5 years where we worked together all day. He taught me how to fly. We did a major landscaping project in the back yard of our condo. We rock climbed together, each of us on the other's belay. Sure we've had our terse moments, though they are rare. Most of the time it's an intricately choreographed dance, a complex interplay and fascinating to watch, even though I am a participant.

While our thinking processes in regards to work projects are quite similar (think orderly and OCD and you'll get it), we each bring something different to the table. When we start a project we take little steps toward our goal and there's a lot of, "What if we.." and "Could I make a suggestion?", and "Do you think we should try to..." being bandied about. We sit and talk about the possibilities a great bit before the first tool is picked up.

In light of the complexity of the bimini project (due to the solar panel frames), we weren't exactly sure what the final design of the skin would be. We agreed on a starting point and, as we proceeded, the methods and procedures adapted to better solutions. We got to where we thought it was pretty right, drank a beer, talked to some neighbors, read awhile, sat under the plastic bimini, and then discovered some better ways to handle the attach points. After some changes the pattern came down, the tape was removed, and we're ready to start the cutting.

Tomorrow it's off to the Sailrite machine, but the real work was done today.