[Rhodes22-list] Bimini Top Mount - Track vs. Fixed

[Roger Pihlaja]

Marc,

The bimini top on Dynamic Equilibrium is mounted in a pair of fixed mounts, which are thru bolted into the gunnels.  As you might imagine, with all the extra "stuff" built into my bimini top, it must be located rather accurately in order for everything to fit properly.  However, while I was building it, I did experiment with various mounting locations.  It turns out there is a fairly narrow range of fore/aft mounting locations that will work without interfering with various ship's functions.

For sailing, the best location is as far aft as will fit without interfering with the main sheet & the boom.  My bimini actually has HD antichafe patches on the aft port & starboard corners as well the very peak in the middle of the bimini.  So, my bimini top is located about as far aft as is physically possible on an R-22.  The further aft the bimini, the better the view of the genoa telltales for sail trimming & steering to weather.  A bimini top or awning will restrict your view of the mainsail & make trimming much more difficult.  We must stick our head over the side & crane our neck upwards to see the mainsail.  I suppose one could install a clear plastic window with a roll-up & zippered sun shade into the bimini top.  That way, the sun shade could be rolled up to permit mainsail trimming & zippered back into place when you want shade.  I always sort of figured the purpose of the bimini was to create shade & putting a clear window into it would sort of defeat that purpose.  So, I never installed one.

For boarding/unboarding, the best bimini top mount location is as far aft as possible.  We don't find our bimini corner guys to be particularly restrictive regarding boarding & unboarding.  However, when we sail with either my aging parents or my even older in-laws, then we will usually unclip the two forward corner guys & fold the front bow back to get the bimini top out of the way entirely for the old folks to board & unboard safely.  The corner guys are attached with snap shackles, so unclipping them is quick & easy.  You didn't say how old &/or flexible you are, so this may or may not be an important factor for you.

Going forward with our bimini top up, I can fit in between the front edge of the bimni & the cabin roof & side railing without too much trouble.  So, we usually leave the front bimini guy lines attached.  A very big, clumsy, or inflexible person might want to unclip the front bimini corner guy to go forward. 

At anchor, the bimini top tends to make the boat weathercock into the wind more strongly.  In effect, the bimini top gives the boat much more windage & tends to make it lie more strongly to the wind & less strongly to the current.  However, over the course of an evening at anchor, the wind may die entirely, change direction, &/or strength.  While the currents tend to change much more predictably & more slowly.  In a light & variable wind situation, the bimini top will cause the boat to lie to the wind one minute & to the current the next.  In this respect, the bimini top tends to make the boat behave much more like the power boats at anchor all around you.  

I would never leave the boat with the bimini top partially unclipped.  That's just asking for the bimini top to get damaged &, with snap shackles on the corner guys, it's totally unnecessary.  In fact, what we usually do is unclip the two rear corner guys & fold up the bimini onto the top of the cabin roof.  The gunnel mounts permit the bimini top to simply pivot forward.  The two front corner guys are long enough to permit this without unclipping them.  Even if we don't stow the bimini top inside of its boot, its still safer furled down on top of the cabin roof.

I suppose there would be some small advantages to having the bimini top mounts on a track-mounted slide vs a fixed mount.  However, the genoa track-mounted bimini mount would block free movement of the genoa sheet lead position.  I guess it would depend upon where the bimini mount ended up on the genoa track.  If it was anywhere forward of the sheet winches, then that would be totally unacceptable on our boat, but you may not care as much about sail trimming.

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium