When it comes to weather curtains, you get what you pay for.
By John Clemans
Bimini tops, soft tops for center consoles, coaming pads, cushions and a wide variety of covers all fall under the heading "boat canvas." Most of these items are made of material that, in fact, resembles what the term suggests — a tough, white (but more often colored) fabric of some sort. But many marine "canvas" shops concentrate on products made from an entirely different material — clear plastic. Used to make weather curtains, or enclosures, for wherever both protection from the elements and visibility are required or desired on a boat, clear plastic comes in two basic versions — flexible and rigid.
Weather curtains or an enclosure are often listed in the "options" column of a new boat's features, whether it's a center console (see "Sportfishing") or a motoryacht. Before checking the box, it's wise to examine the workmanship and materials you'll get, because not all enclosures are created equal. This is just as true when you have an old enclosure replaced, which often becomes necessary after only a few years.
I recently witnessed the replacement of a flying bridge enclosure on a 42-foot Hatteras from start to finish. Because the job was done by P&R Canvas of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I learned how high-tech the process can be. P&R is on the cutting edge when it comes to the design and manufacture of such enclosures. The firm is headed by Robert Popiel, whose father moved the family marine canvas business from New Jersey to Florida in 1974. The company's name stems from the consolidation of Products By Roberts, the Popeils' firm, with PipeWelders Marine, a world leader in tower fabrication. The merger resulted in one-stop shopping for boat owners. The exclusive canvas shop for PipeWelders, which has several satellite offices, P&R works on boats from dinghies to megayachts, including Intrepids, Jupiters, Bertrams, Hatterases, Vikings, Cabos, Tiaras, Azimuts and Ferrettis, among others.
"About 60 percent of our business is clear enclosures, both vinyl and rigid," says Popiel. "Rigid enclosures have gradually been taking over, accounting for about half of those we make for large sport-fishing boats. The rigid material can be acrylic or polycarbonate, more often the former, which is familiar to most boat owners as EZ2CY, but is now available from several distributors. When is comes to flexible enclosures whose panels can be rolled up, clear vinyl is commonly used. But we recommend Strataglass, which is clear vinyl with a scratch-resistant coating." Strataglass is the choice of virtually all high-end shops. Introduced in 1994, it's recognized as superior in resisting damage from UV degradation, loss of plasticizer and scratching.
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Curtain Care.
There are pores in clear vinyl, although the coating on Strataglass minimizes this. Here are Robert Popiel's enclosure maintenance tips. For new curtains:
1. Wash thoroughly. Dry well with a chamois.
2.Wax with Collinite Liquid Insulator wax (colliniteindustrial.com) as soon as possible to seal the pores.
3. Switch to IMAR Strataglass Protective Wax (imarsales.com). Use it every two to three months. In areas of high fallout and under shed roofs, use it every four to six weeks. |
There are basically four choices in enclosure material: 30- and 40- gauge (mils) clear vinyl; 40-gauge Strataglass; 60- and 80-gauge polycarbonate; and 80-gauge acrylic. Polycarbonate and acrylic are two different plastics. Acrylic lasts longer, stays cleaner and is more impervious to the effects of the elements, including acid rain, exhaust from planes and the contaminants that fall from the undersides of bridges. "Acrylic seems to last the longest," says Popiel. Of course, in order to have an enclosure with an acrylic panel or panels that open, a boat must have the overhead room for the panel to swing up and be secured. There was no such room on this Hatteras 42. Another virtue of acrylic is that scratches can be buffed out.
"Acrylic also has the best R-value," says Popiel. This is becoming more important because an increasing number of new boats are offering air conditioning in areas with clear enclosures. This doesn't matter when the enclosure has only three sides, as those on many express and convertible fishing boats do (yet they still offer cold air vents at the helm), but when the enclosure is four-sided, the insulating value of the material makes a difference. It also helps keep heat in when the enclosure becomes, in effect, a greenhouse. Popiel notes: "Ninety percent of our enclosures in Florida are three-sided. Up north, 90 percent are four-sided." Using that fourth side on a cold day when returning from the canyons can make a big difference in creature comfort.
When deciding on an enclosure, make sure to compare apples to apples in workmanship as well as in materials. Estimates for a job may vary, but don't choose the lowest one before inspecting some jobs done by the canvas shop giving the quote. Then make sure the materials will be the same as used for an enclosure you want yours to resemble. The steps shown here will illustrate some of the variables to consider.
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Step-By-Step
1. A track holds the tops of the enclosure curtains whether they open or not. Here, the track is anodized aluminum and has a flange attached with rivets. Because the track was still in good shape, the owner decided to keep it. He could have chosen between a new, similar track or an extruded aluminum or an extruded vinyl track without a flange. P&R's state-of-the-art, flangeless, extruded aluminum tracks are attached with hidden number-six screws with number-four heads. They look much cleaner. Vinyl tracks come in a wide variety of colors so they can be matched to the color of a fabric or a tower. Aluminum can be powder-coated to match a colored tower. Rivets are quick and easy, but they are much weaker than screws. Here, the rivets are being drilled out so they can be replaced with stainless-steel screws. 
2. A nylon washer was used between the screw head and the pipe; the threads received a dab of Tef-Gel (tef-gel.com) to help prevent corrosion. Because flanges are flat and pipe is round, screws are far preferable to hollow rivets whose heads can pop off from vibration and the slight rocking of the flange from the wind. The boat's pounding stresses curtains. The measurements on the tracks were written with a black Sharpie marker at the same time they were recorded on paper. P&R uses measurements alone to calculate the proper shapes and dimensions of an enclosure's components. Thus, the measurements are critical. They're made frequently enough and at certain key points so they capture the curves and the positions of the seams and zippers exactly. Some shops use a "hard pattern" made of fabric or paper to work from. 
3. Here's where things get high-tech. The measurements are entered into a CAD 2-D/3-D computer program that displays the positions of seams, zippers and material lines and also shows 3-D views of the entire enclosure. Accuracy is to within one-hundredth of an inch. Compared to traditional methods, says Popiel, "We're in uncharted territory here." Adjustments can be made if something doesn't look right by double-checking the measurements. Full-size patterns are printed out on 72-inch-wide paper that, in the case of the patterns for the Hatteras, was 330 inches long. The patterns are used to cut the clear vinyl and to lay all the pieces on before they are stitched together, greatly speeding up the process. 
4. While the cutting of the Strataglass is done by hand from the patterns, the cutting of the trim fabric is computerized and automated. The computer hooked up to the robotic cutter figures out how to most efficiently make the cuts to minimize wasted material. Stamoid marine vinyl fabric was used for the trim on this enclosure — a composite material that has a special coating to give it durability, high UV and mold resistance and dimensional stability. It's easy to maintain and 100 percent waterproof. Stamoid Marine (stamoidmarine.com) makes several grades of fabric used for enclosures, boat tops, dodgers and covers. Another fabric used for these purposes is vinyl-coated Sunbrella, which comes in a wide variety of colors. It's used extensively by boatbuilders and P&R uses it when customers want to match what they have. "I like using Sunbrella because it is so stable," says Popiel. 
5. The Stamoid trim strips are laid out on the patterns and held in place with awls. Then the Strataglass is added and held in place with double-sided tape. The Stamoid trim and clear Strataglass are stitched together with a sewing machine. When rigid acrylic is used instead of flexible vinyl, it is attached to the trim with a special adhesive. The thread is the component that often fails first on an enclosure. To prevent this, P&R uses Tenera thread, a Goretex product that will last just as long as the enclosure itself, so resewing won't be necessary. This is an example of how important it is to know exactly what will be used when having an enclosure made. 
6. Popiel inspects the finished curtains for flaws and to make sure they all come together exactly. Zippers are another component that can fail prematurely. Make sure your enclosure has either YKK or RiRi zippers. YKK Vislon UV zippers have the strength to function as a "tool" that applies tension to get the enclosure to tighten up. 
7. Before final installation, all the Common Sense (also called Murphy Twist) and Lift-a-Dot fasteners on the windshield were replaced with new ones. The Common Sense fasteners, which Popiel calls "the most positive," were on the sides of the windshield and the Lift-a-Dots were in front. Ideally, if the boat had been getting a more extensive refit, the old windshield would have been replaced and instead of these fasteners, a bottom track would be used. "A track would make for a tighter installation," says Popiel. "And it would have spread the load out more. Buttons like these are becoming obsolete, but some traditionalists still ask for them." |
Other Boatkeeper tips featured this month:
- More Electronics from past issues.
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