"A" frame for boat covers

[cs]

This is for all you fine folks out there how have small open boats that are kept outside.

I have a 14' sharpie that I keep outside on a trailer. This is a small open boat that with help can be flipped over, but I prefer to keep it upright on the trailer. The problem I have is with it collecting rain water. I know that this is a common problem that most of you have taken care of, but let me tell you how I fixed it.

First of all I bought a boat cover from Wal-Mart. Along with the cover I bought these poles that are used for "tenting" the cover. They have a nice big base and a nice rounder top. The problem I had with these is that they would fall down and thus rain water would collect on the cover.

To fix the problem I went out to Home Depot and got a few pieces of 1/2" pvc pipe along with some 45 degree elbows some Tees and some Crosses. In no time I had construced an "A" frame that was 10' long and fit inside the boat. This allowed the cover to cover the boat without any low spots for water to collect.

This frame cost less than $10 to build and took me less than 20 minutes to put together.

Chad

[On Vacation]

Chad, on a sail boat you can do this with your mast and crutches fore and aft. It keeps the tarp close to the hull and allows for air to vent through. Tie it down to the trailer. If you don't have a mast or sailboat, then use a 2x6 and router the edges on the topside. Post some update shots of the canoe.

[cs]

I thought about doing this, but I would have had to build a crutch to hold the mast. Being as all the spars will fit inside the boat this is only needed for storage and it was cheaper to build a pvc "A" frame instead.

Chad

[Wayne Jeffers]

Chad,

For my skiff, I laminated bows to hold the cover up. I bought sockets for them at a local boat dealer and made the bows from clear fir. IIRC, the bows were about 1 7/8" wide and laminated from two layers of wood for a total thickness of 1/4 or 5/16 inch. I put one every 2 1/2 feet or so. I've had as much as 22 inches of snow on top of the cover and it has held up okay. Best part is, they pop right out when I'm ready to go and they're light and compact to set aside until I'm ready to use them again.

Wayne