[Rhodes22-list] Boom Room

[Bill Effros]

Alex,

Little has changed since you were last on the list.  PS keeps bashing 
the Magellan.  I never sail the Florida Keys.  And no one has come up 
with the definitive Boom Room solution.

I have inserted below some of Pamela's thoughts on boom rooms.  Did 
anything ever come of this?  Now that you two are in the canvas 
business, would you have an interest in developing the ultimate R-22 
boom room?  I'm a buyer.  I'm sure there are others.

Bill Effros

2/12/2001

When BlewDaze gets back home, I plan to work on our cockpit enclosure.  My
experiment is to convert an inexpensive tent to cover the cockpit.  I found one
from Campmor with an 8' x 8' footprint, screens/zip-panel windows on three
'walls', and screen/zip-panel door on the fourth.  This tent will be
lightweight, store easily, and the low price was a bargain for all the
materials included (ripstop nylon, zippers, no-seeum screen, etc). For support,
I have the bonus of a bimini, which provides a nice wide 'roof', so won't need
to deal with other fiberglass tent poles for support.  Since I am also
reluctant to drill holes in BlewDaze, I plan to sew 'weight cord' (available at
drapery supplies store) into a hem to keep the bottom edges down outside the
gunnels.



2/13/2001

Although I'm sure GB's boom room is great, we're trying other homemade options to minimize weight and storage size.  We do have GB's wonderful canvas pop-top
enclosure (it's a must in my opinion).  However, this is much smaller in size
than the canvas boom room, and it's still enough to 'wrestle'.

Before our bimini, we used the  tarp-over-the-boom technique.  This did not
provide comfortable seating, as the angled sides didn't provide a wide 'roof',
and we'd have to lean forward or hunch when seated in the cockpit.

The second year, we added a bimini and we're very happy with this feature.  It's
convenient to use, and provides shade and weather protection without having to
use the boom for support (so the sails can still be up).

An additional bonus, has been that this bimini provides a great support for the
large nylon tarp cockpit enclosure.  Bungeed down to the outer gunnels, it keeps
us quite dry in extreme rainstorms.  This tarp stores very compactly in a 12" x
4" roll.

Anyway, for our new/improved cockpit enclosure, I'm just trying to expand on the
advantages of utilizing the nice bimini support structrure we already have, and
keeping the weight and size down  (Trying to cooperate, as Alex thinks BlewDaze
already has too much stuff onboard).  The tent I bought to convert will not
weigh much, and will store in a small roll.   Hope my experiment is successful!