Mainsail Cover

It's spring and my husband's thoughts are turning to boat maintenance. He can spend hours at the marina happily working on our little sailboat. Recently he brought home the mainsail cover for modification. It looks nice, however I am not impressed with the shape or construction.

I'll spare you a discussion on the shape and only discuss the fastening here. The person who made it used small pieces of velcro which she sewed on so that the wrong side of the fabric faced itself, think of an upside down U with a piece of velcro on both inside surfaces of the opening.

 It would have been stronger if she had positioned the velcro so that the cover overlapped when the velcro was fastened, turning the U into a closed O. For some strange reason the mainsail doesn't collapse in the perfect folds shown in a manufacturers brochure. I doubt if they ever do in real life conditions. Imagine lining up 2" long pieces of velcro placed every twelve inches in a variety of weather conditions. We spent last year budging the sail cover into place because it doesn't fit well and we didn't trust to stay closed in strong winds.

We decided to use ties to keep the cover in place. Our choice was 1" wide woven polyester. The product is known as strapping, webbing and belting depending upon the manufacturer.

I made the mistake of waiting until Saturday night when the cover was home, discussing where we wanted the strapping and how long the pieces were to be and doing a little math, rather than guesstimating and purchasing 18 yards at work. I realized it was a mistake when I called around on Sunday morning and discovered the shop where I work has by FAR the best price of any place I checked. The next best price was West Marine. I headed there on Sunday morning, procured it and spent a few hours adding straps of increasing length to the edges of the sail cover.

I used the same chain piecing technique employed by quilters to finish the ends of the webbing. Each is folded over once and stitched into place with three lines of stitching (forward, reverse, forward). Then a liquid to keep the ends from fraying.

Each piece of strapping is sewn onto the doubled hem of the cover with a sturdy X boxed in with a square.
We have yet to try it out. I'll add pictures when we do. I am expecting a big improvement in the ease with which we secure the mainsail (at least for this wimp).

Here is the kitten picture. He is incapable of staying away from anything with strings attached.

My Orchids

A few weeks ago I gave away an orchid. 

Going to a new home with a new bloom spike and fertilizer

A previous blooming

It was the first orchid for the girl it went to, so I decided she could use some guidance. I certainly would have appreciated it with my first orchid.  I wrote down all of the bits of knowledge that I have gleaned over the past few years and organized it alphabetically by subject.

I am told without pictures the paper was seven pages when printed and I've added to it since! So I know more than I realized, which is always a nice surprise.

Putting my orchid page together took much MUCH longer than I would have guessed. hmmm...I really should illustrate this term. Look through all of my pictures. Well guess what? I've never taken a picture of a node or a crown or a _____. Out comes the camera. Download to laptop. hmmm...Adjust lighting. Download. Oh good, that worked! PhotoShop. Upload to blog. Caption.

Click on the tab at top to be taken to my orchid page and left click on the pictures for a larger image.