Retired from newspapers and television, currently sailing Thelonious II, a 1984 Ericson 381.
Weather cloths, fabric barriers to spray and wind that surround the cockpit, are simple enough to make and fit.
They have a proud history in the ranks of the early long-distance cruisers, generally with the yacht's name writ large so as to be observed and reported by steamers in the days before communication was taken for granted. Bernard Moitessier, racing alone around the world, launched toy boats with messages home aboard, sending them off toward shore to draw the attention of aboriginal beachcombers in the antipodes. He had weather cloths, too. The very words have a grand sound. "Weather cloths", a lisping English statement of determination and the expectation of wet night watches.
I put them on and took some ladies sailing who pronounced them an immediate hit. They certainly do cut the wind, and did intercept a few whitecap splashes. They also make the cockpit rather hot, and frankly, this being a light-wind zone, being splashed is a rare thing and generally was formerly celebrated as bracing. But who am I to argue with success.
In creating the weather cloths on my sewing machine I made one brilliant invention that saved money and time; stole an idea from the invaluable Google Images, which provides hundreds of photo examples of almost any boat idea you can think up, and countered my bright idea with a time-wasting blunder having to do with the wave length of yellow and its effect upon the human eyeball.
I painted on the name of the boat in large letters, as tradition dictates. The recommended paint for Sunbrella is simple latex exterior house paint. I made my own stencils by printing out the Microsoft Word Arial font in 300-point size. Painting outlined letters by hand is not difficult, and soon I had "Thelonious" in Sunflower Yellow hanging in the back yard at dusk. Why, it was lovely. I asked everyone at dinner if this weather cloth, currently tied to the hedge, would be visible far at sea, say, by a Flower-class corvette with Jack Hawkins peering through binoculars from the open bridge in a North Sea gale. Not having seen eleven times the movie of "The Cruel Sea", they didn't know what the devil I was talking about. But yellow seemed a very flowery color, and all averred it could be seen for miles, no question about it, pass the claret this way old fellow.
I happily put my yellow letters on the boat and here was the result.
In daylight, you can't see it at all. What a shocking change from dusk and a green hedge. What is the sense of painting your name large if nobody can read it? I had to take it off, and back to the garage, and repaint every letter on both sides, which took all day. Now the color is not yellow, but a teal blue that comes close to matching the cove stripe (You will want to know that this color is Do it Best Paints D274 Cavalry Blue). But what a blunder. Homer Simpson on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Just plain bad judgement and silly. I blame my family.
The brilliant invention was a method of fixing the top of the cloth to the lifeline. Generally this is done with the sort of turning locks we see on sail covers. But they are expensive, and somewhat awkward to install, and making an oval hole in several layers of cloth needs to be done with a soldering iron, takes a long time, and looks oddly burned. What I did was to use brass grommets from Home Depot.
To fasten the overlap, a cable tie through two holes with a dowel pin on one side.
Very clever if I do say so, and the grommets go on like lightning. Lashings hold the cloth ends to stanchions. Anything solid brass at Home Depot I consider nautically correct, especially when a package of ten grommets costs $2.95.
The stolen or borrowed idea was to add a pocket or two to the inside of the cloths, suitable for sunglasses or a folded chart in reach when entering some atoll in the South Pacific. Very handy and easy to do, and I only learned about it from pictures.
So now, for a while at least, I have weather cloths just like a Tahiti Ketch meandering toward the equator at 2 knots in 1951. You can't see the water from the helm. You feel like a fish who has swum into a weir. Sweat forms, the breeze dies, voices are amplified. Of course, instead of whales spouting behind me, I have at the moment a wedding on the yacht club lawn with a mariachi band. Welcome back to 2014.
I am told that weather cloths ought to be removed entirely in a storm at sea. It seems that the force of green water bursting aboard can carry away not only the weather cloths but the stanchions with them.
[Allow to me add, after 30-40 knots on the beam and seas breaking across the boat, that the stanchions were in no danger. The grommets merely ripped out, leaving the lee cloth quite relieved of strain, although I can't say the same for the skipper, after 50 hours of it.]
A great tradition, don't you think?
"Sewmanship":
Part 1-- http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexc...Sewing-Machine
Part 2-- http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexc...estal-Mainsail
Part 3-- http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexc...ior-Upholstery
Part 4--http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoex...ship-4-Line-Bags-Seat-Locker-Grab-Rail-Covers
Part 6--Repairing Upholstery Holes
