C'est la Vie is a 1966 Charlie Morgan 34.

Her home port is Everglades City, FL. Our typical cruising area is Southwest Florida, the Florida Keys, the Southeastern Atlantic Seaboard, and the Bahamas. We are C'est la Vie's third owners and purchased her in 2005. We continue to maintain and update this classic vessel. Please post any questions or comments about C'est la Vie or our travels via the comment links below.


Thursday, June 24, 2010

A bit of shade for the bow, too

We have expended a great deal of time and resources to complete the bimini project and provide shade for the cockpit area, what about the other end of the boat?  With a little over a days worth of effort we created an awning for the foredeck.  The foredeck awning is less about shade and more intended to increase ventilation  by allowing the forward hatches and ports to remain open during rain showers.

We began the project by creating a pattern using plastic sheeting...
The pattern was then used to figure out the best layout to minimize material waste.  We used the excess along the sides in the image above to create the forward triangle on the pattern....
Creating patterns for projects and calculating the most efficient use of material is a facet in which I feel my sewing has improved in the past couple weeks.  The only waste material in this project as the two small triangles that extend out left and right at the top of the image above.

Below is the completed tarp.  To keep systems uniform on the boat, I again used flat webbing and cam buckles for the attachment points
Ample webbing will allow for flexibility in setting up to account for various conditions.  The pattern was created for the primary set up seen in the image below.
More images of the project can be viewed via a link titled Foredeck Awning in the photo albums links on the right side of our web page.

1 comment:

  1. I just found your blog today via your post on the Small Boat Projects blog. The post on creating the sunshade was something that I was just thinking about today. Thanks for the great pics and details.

    Mike

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