Pop Top for Trailer Sailor

[Dave Hadfield]

I'm opening a new thread for this, because the picture is wide and I don't want to mess up the side-to-side dimension of Roger's thread.

Here's a photo of the Pop-Top on the Mac 26, taken on a Lake Superior trip we did in 1997. It pivoted up on 4 arms, very simply, and attached to the mast with a thumbscrew. The part that went up corresponded to the walking-around space on the cabin floor. It contained the hatch-slide, which required no handling/securing at all.

As far as Robin is concerned, the pop-top made the boat liveable. Without it, it would've been like living in a cave. She would've considered the boat a glorified day-sailor. (Woman's input! Very important!) With it, we did trips up to 2 weeks long. In fact this photo is taken just after launching for a trip along Superior's North Shore, which did indeed take that long -- all wilderness cruising.

Notice the section of deck that is covered by the raised top. This becomes storage space under the vinyl cover we had made to cover the raised top and enclose the sides. It was quite useful. Among other things, we put a 5gal water container up there with its tap just over the opening. Pressure water system!

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y79/DaveHadfield/MacGregor26showingpop-top.jpg

[Venchka]

Dave,

How well do those pop tops seal? How strong are they? Everytime I look at a pop top Catalina 22 I wonder about these things. If a fella was building from scratch in wood, do you suppose the pop top could be built sturdy enough and seal well enough to not cause proplems in nasty consitions?

Wayne
In the Swamp. :D

[Dave Hadfield]

They seal well enough. When folded, the arms are nearly horizontal. It's easy to set up hooks with wing nuts that tighten and hold down the arm tightly. This pulls the top onto a gasket and makes a decent seal.

It will not keep out green water flowing over the deck, but those are extreme conditions for a boat of this type. If you had solid water flowing over the pop top it would squirt water inside from various places, including the hatch slide. It does however, keep out all the spray and rain you'd ever normally meet. We certainly never had a problem with it and we ended up in 6footers plenty of times.

[Dave Hadfield]

I'm bumping this because someone just asked a question on lifting cabin tops.

[PVanderwaart]

Back toward the beginning of the fiberglass boat era, there were a couple versions of the pop top. I think the system like the Mac with the parallelogram linkage became the most popular.

Another system is to have a hatch the slides out of the way and erect a canvas top, one way or another. The Beachcomber 25 cat ketch used aluminum hoops for a canvas top. I note that on the one moored next to me, the canvas top was replaced by fiberglass. Canvas tops are the only kind I can remeber seeing on homebuilt boats.

I think I've also seen tip-up tops, where one end gets raised and the other stays down, sort of like the trunk of a car.

[Gavin Atkin]

This Broads-style lifting roof (http://pws.prserv.net/coniston/contents/broads/image/yacht.jpg) might be interesting to some...

Gavin

[PVanderwaart]

Originally posted by Gavin Atkin:
This Broads-style lifting roof (http://pws.prserv.net/coniston/contents/broads/image/yacht.jpg) might be interesting to some...
Called a "summer cabin" in the US. Very popular in catboats in New York and New Jersey in the early 20th century.

[Wes Kisting]

Yes, that's almost exactly what I had in mind when asking about pop-tops... pretty cool, although I wonder if it really adds enough convenience to be worth the hassle of fooling with.

A boat cabin that could expand sideways... now THAT would be something. Hmmmm.... smile.gif