Day 36 (2020-04-17) > Day 56 (2020-05-07) After having spent two days working a template for a helm cover it was now time to start working on the actual covers using the materials from our old Bimini and lazy bag.
Quite an absorbing task, I would say, even for John that was very committed to help with hand cranking to allow for slow but steady and safe sewing and also to brainstorm on how to tackle each challenge.
True teamwork.
The result was surprising given the age of the materials and the inexperience of the seamstresses. From there we moved to winch covers, 6 of them nicely fitted, snug.
Another great learning curve and a few more days focusing on the job from early morning until late afternoon.
Once we finished the winch covers we were on a groove so one of the mornings we got up at 5am to take the mainsail down so we could make some changes on the lazy bag.
We still had some big leftover pieces from the new Bimini material so it was finally time to rectify yet another job done by North Sails Cascais. We added another piece of fabric and repositioned the buckles allowing us to properly close the lazy bag without resorting to an extra removable piece of cover (that North Sails created to “solve" their mistake). We then adjusted that removable piece into a full mast base cover protecting all sheets and blocks below the boom level.
Two zippers were also added to each side of the lazy bag so now we can zip some shade canvas to make a "day tent"!
Unfortunately, by now we had already run out of material to work with so we ended up with a makeshift shade canvas that doesn’t really fit as we wanted. But once the lockdown is finished and we can buy proper material we can quickly redo these shades with the correct shape and simply zip in place. For now, we have a weird-looking "tent" that works fine.
We also made a Main traveller cover and Genoa car/traveller covers to protect the working parts of the boat, a cover for our Hydrovane and refinish the covers of our Man Over Board buoys.
But the top of our endeavors was the companion way mosquito net!
The "test drive" of the Sailrite kept us occupied precisely for one month, keeping our minds busy and challenged. We are now even more eager to get our own Sailrite machine.
For us, this was great reuse/recycle of our old Bimini dodger and lazy bag with all the zips, buckles and fabric reused.