Covering Up

Beginning - at this point I thought it would only take 2 hours!

My list of things to sew is still a whole page long so I thought it was time to stop procrastinating and start sewing! The most challenging job is to cover our inflatable dinghy. It is suffering from the sun and salt - a cover will extend its life for much longer! I found a website that explained how to go about making a cover... 

First, we hauled the dinghy up the boat ramp in Bowen and set it in the shade of a picnic table. After washing it down, we started taping together a paper pattern using our old marine park maps. This seemingly simple act turned out to be quite fiddly and difficult. We worked at making the pattern for over 8 hours. 

 aaaaaaaargh!

People came and went - some just stared, others thought we were making a protest boat using all of the green zone maps and some thought we were making a paper mache boat! 
I was over the moon when a bunch of people who'd been water skiing took pity on us and gave us some of their beers at sunset :D 

Marking out the patterns.

The next day, our amazingly generous friends let us use their verandah to set out the pattern and cut it out. Of course, this seemingly simple job took hours longer than expected as we hit unforeseen snags. I really wish we'd had Rene's mum with us as she's a sewing queen!   

Another whole day on this task. By sunset, I had 5 pieces of ripstock material marked, cut and ready to be sewn. 

Part of the pattern monster...

The next step is to actually sew the pieces together. The thread I'm using is a very thick polyester that keeps getting snagged in my needle. Last night Nick from Yawarra 2 gave me some larger needles so I'm hoping that will make a difference when I come to complete this mammoth task! 

A simple success story.

On another note, I covered our derelict cockpit cushions easily - making them as good as new! The salt and sun really does eat away at everything out here.