New Sea Hood
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This page was last updated on 21 August, 2004
The factory glassed our seahood to the original Valiant 40 seahood mold. Not inexpensive, but it's gorgeous, a perfect fit, and rock solid -- well worth the expenditure. It's purpose is to cover the area in front of the companionway, providing a little garage for the hatch cover to slide into, and protecting the companioway from ocean waves, should they ever have the audacity to encroach.
New seahood direct from the factory, sitting in
front of
the companionway, ready to be re-sized and installed.
Manhandling the thing from work to the dock was a chore. It was delivered to MJ's Northrop workplace -- an awkward 4 ft. X 4 ft. X 1 ft. package -- wouldn't you know, just inches larger than hallway doors, elevator doors and the trunk of the car. Thanks to Bonnie, who lent her muscle when the package was wedged tightly in a doorway; and to John, who hefted the thing into the Camry's shrinking trunk, MJ was able to wrestle it home to J-dock. There, Stan took over, jacking it up over his head and waddling down the gangway with it.
The hood was built with a nice big lip around the bottom, and no openings, configured to be customized exactly to SolMate's unique companionway contours. Hm, customized. That's our trusty shipwright's job.
Customizing, however, would require a tool the trusty shipwright didn't have -- a saw with a blade long enough to clear the lip and still cut horizontally around the bottom edge. Stan's first order of business in seahood installation, then, was to find a saw. He first checked around to see if he could borrow one. He asked all the normal suspects, his tight little brotherhood of do-it-yourselfers on the dock. Unfortunately, Bob's saw was conveniently stored in Oregon and Mike's was stashed away in someone's LA garage.
Next, he explored rentals. Whoops, gotta have a CA driver's license to rent (so you can be ticketed if you walk away with it, or what?). Having cleverly changed our residence to FL, and unable to produce the requisite driver's license (and "needing" a new saw, anyway), Stan finally bought one. He plunked down a hundred bucks at Ace Hardware, where they know him by name and his credit card number by heart, for a nifty Saws-All.
The right tool for the job, the Saws-All
Seahood, looking back, first cut; the outside lip removed.
Seahood, looking forward, measuring the back cutout.
Perched above the companionway looking down on the
traveller where
the hood needed notches cut to fit underneath.
From the front, notches
cut and seahood fit back underneath
the traveller.
Fiberglass work isn't easy, it's rock hard to cut, and it's messy. The Saws-All came with extra-special, super-duper cutting blades just for fiber glass. Stan decimated two of them. Trying his damnedest to be environmentally responsible by controlling the insidious, itchy dust while he reshaped the hood's front and sides, he ran the vacuum cleaner as he sawed.
The lip around the bottom was conveniently formed in two levels so that the cut could be parallel to the deck, hidden when installed. No painting required for the cut edge, either, saving additonal work (yea!). With the wide lip cut off, the hood fit into the space behind the companionway next to the handrail, and it was time for the big cut. Smart shipwright that he is, Stan made the garage door cutout in stages lest he mis-measure. Finally, he had the cutout the right size and could slide the hood all the way back into place over the door and under the traveller -- except for two little problems.
Hung up on port by the mainsheet block and hung up on starboard by the traveller support, something had to give. Stan notched the bottom lip on each side of the seahood just enough to slip past those two obstacles, and it nestled perfectly into place.
On the outboard side, Stan notched two little drain holes, and then began the tedious work of sanding, and sanding, and sanding until the cut edges were finally smoothed to his liking. The only work left was to drill holes, run two beads of caulk underneath, and screw the whole thing in place.
The final mounting only took him one afternoon -- at this point in his illustrious shipwright career, Stan is accustomed to poking holes in the boat. Once the caulking cured he tightened all of the screws, ensuring a nice, snug fit. And there we have it, our new sea hood, tough enough to tapdance on.
This particular job is finished, but as hapless boatowners know, each project spawns four more. Our next companionway project will fix the attachment points on the bottom edge of the dodger. The original attachments, zippers and boltropes, came off to make way for the seahood. At some point, we'll figure out how to re-secure that bottom flap in order to keep wind, rain and sea out of the cockpit, but that's another project for another time.
