July 2022 – Adventures on the Club

Pegu Club came with a navy blue sail cover and dodger and green interior cushions. The dodger and cushions were reaching the end of their lifespan when we bought her back in 2015, but we inserted new foam in the cushions and limped along with the dodger before it all gave up the ghost towards the end of last summer. The cushions were tearing, Jeff was bottoming out on the settee from the wimpy foam, and the dodger leaked like a sieve. So we knew coming into this year that we would be doing quite a bit of sewing on the Sailrite this summer.

I’ve blogged about our Sailrite before – it’s a fantastic machine and has more than paid for itself. Sailrite has excellent step-by-step videos on YouTube. Even if you haven’t sewn before, you can definitely do your own canvas work as long as you start slow (I recommend a tote bag) before working your way up to more complex projects. Since it had been a few years since I’d sewn anything, I started by making a handful of totes to get used to the feel of the machine again before getting to the cushions.

These Sunbrella totes hold up much better than the giveaway boat show totes.

Having made cockpit cushions already, I knew making interior cushions wouldn’t be too difficult. The hardest part was going to be deciding what fabric we wanted to use. Pegu Club is our home, and this was going to be a great opportunity to put our personal stamp on her decor. We’ve always gravitated to a mid-century modern style, so after ordering several sample pieces it turned out to be a relatively easy decision. The only tricky part was that the material was striped. I had never sewn with stripes before, and I knew it was all-too-easy for it to end up mismatched. We were going to have to be careful to make sure everything was lined up.

Lucky for us, we were able to use our good friends’ Jeff and Denise’s house to go on a sewing binge. We drove up there on a Friday with all of our supplies and foam and took over their living room and dining room for the weekend. We were SO grateful – we never could have sewed them on the Shenny picnic tables. The cushions were simply too large.

We used the Sailrite “30 minute box cushion” pattern for three out of four of the cushions, although at well over 30 minutes per cushion, there was clearly some creative licensing going on by Sailrite in choosing that pattern name. The fourth cushion was a traditional box cushion because it was angled due to the shape of the hull. Jeff W. was a huge help to my Jeff when it came time to cut the foam, and I think he was amused by my occasional teeth-gnashing and seam ripping.

We had a few hiccups that we were able to improvise fixes for, but by mid-morning Sunday we were all driving down to Shenny for the moment of truth: would they fit? Although I measured at least five times before we headed up to Jeff and Denise’s house, I was still pretty nervous that they wouldn’t. So you can imagine how thrilled we all were to discover that they fit perfectly, the stripes matched up, and the foam provided plenty of support so that Jeff no longer bottomed out when he sat down. Yes!

Even though we’ve had them now for well over a month, I still come down the companionway steps and think about how much I love this pattern. Well worth the effort it took to make them, the cushions reflect our personal style and has made Pegu Club feel even more like our home.

Old cushions:

New cushions:

I swear we were perfectly content with our 8′ Walker Bay hard dinghy with the flotation tubes (also known as dinghy number five). Purchased in the fall of 2019, we had easily dragged it onto rocky beaches, it went fast enough to keep us happy with our 2.3 hp outboard, and we had successfully and easily towed it to and from the Bahamas twice.

And that right there was the problem: we had to tow it. The Walker Bay took up most of the room on the foredeck, and we have set our sights on going farther afield (details to come in the future). We needed a dinghy we didn’t have to tow, and we still didn’t want an inflatable. That’s how we ended up with dinghy number six, the ugliest dinghy I have ever seen in my life: the Porta-bote.

zwp-portabote-white-10ft-800x533 — The 10′ porta-bote put together (from Google images).

Our friends Tom and Anita on S/V Lone Star have had a Porta-bote for many years so we were familiar with it, and other cruising friends of ours bought one in 2018 and were very happy with it. So we waited for a boat show special and pulled the trigger on a 10′ model.

At 10’4″ long and 5 feet wide unfolded, the Porta-bote collapses to a width of 2 feet and a thickness of 8″. With standup paddle board J-hooks that we purchased separately, we can store it against the hull on the outside of the boat. We can also store it on the side deck, but that limits us to going forward on the opposite side of the boat.

images-2 — This is how it will look stored on the J-hooks.

It’s a bit heavier than the Walker Bay, but substantially lighter than the Achilles inflatable (dinghy number four). It is every bit as tough as the Walker Bay, so we can drag it up onto sandy or rocky beaches without puncturing it like an inflatable. And its sheer unattractiveness makes it an unlikely target for thieves. It scoots us along very quickly with our 2.3 hp outboard, has much more room for groceries and supplies than the Walker Bay, and it’s a VERY dry ride.

Jeff taking the Porta-Bote out on its maiden voyage.

We have yet to try setting it up on the boat, but we’ve been told by other people with 30′ sailboats that – with some practice – we can do it in a few minutes by lying it athwartship across the lifelines. I’m sure there will be much swearing involved the first few times, but by the time we get to Florida we should be old pros at it! In the meantime, after trying it out in our harbor, we can unequivocally say that it suits our needs perfectly. It looks like dinghy number six will be sticking around for a VERY long time.

Month: July 2022

Canvas (part one) – new interior cushions.

Yes, we have a dinghy problem. Dinghy #6.