After we finished the hardtop, I modified the dodger canvas to suit.  I kind of forgot about the *rest* of the canvas until now.  We have the arch pretty much done and Jason drug out all of the old stainless bimini bars that had been sitting underneath the boat for 6 months.  Since we’ve never seen the canvas installed on this boat, we have no idea how it’s supposed to actually go together and since we changed a lot of the structure in the back of the boat, we’re going to have to get creative to get everything put back in place.

We started with the top pieces of canvas since there are cutouts to go around the rigging at the back and it was pretty obvious where all of that stuff was going to go.  It was windy and everything was getting blown around so we had to stop for the day, but we have a pretty good idea of how it’s supposed to work… we just have to wait for a calmer day to reconfigure the support bars and hopefully get the canvas put on so we can use it!

We finally got around to moving the bimini bars around until the back half of the canvas was tight. The middle section was the big problem because of what we had to do to get the hardtop installed.  I ended up only having to rip the old zipper out and install grommets to lash the fabric to the railing like we did for the canvas on the dodger. Pretty straightforward!

The shape of the middle piece of canvas is a little weird and it narrows in the front and a lot of the canvas, stitching, and zippers are all but worn out. Overall, though, it’ll provide really nice shade and as long as it gets us through a season of cruising so I can make a new one later it’ll work just fine! 🙂