Friday Funny 06-12/20 (Roger that, Dodger)

You haven't heard much from me lately, I've been keeping my nose to the grindstone.
(idiomatic, after keep, put, have, hold (one's)) used to form idioms meaning "to work hard, or focus heavily on work." 

It's paying off, and we're seeing results, (finally, whew.) I thought the bimini would be complicated, and the dodger easy, but that turned out to be backwards.

In between rain squalls, I laid out, and cut the dodger pieces on the dock, and sewed most of it together inside at my sewing table.The challenge turned out to be getting the windshield sewed in, and then getting the zipper pockets to line up with the stainless support bars. Everything lined up so well with the bimini, so I wasn't too concerned, but the dodger didn't go quite as well. 

Dodger laid out for more detailing.

This windshield is not the typical heavy duty clear vinyl you normally see on boats, or the material I've used on the curtain construction. The brand I've used for the curtains is Strataglass, and it's the recognized leader in longevity, and clarity for marine clear vinyl. The windshield is a hard polycarbonate, Makrolon [VR; Fabrication and care info], and is is more rigid than the vinyl. My sewing machine is heavy duty, and is built to handle these kinds of jobs, but it balked at this until the engineer, (Bill), watched all of the maintenance videos, and did some work on the machine. I'm grateful that he likes that kind of stuff. Once we got the machine back in working order, it only took about twenty minutes to sew the perimeter of the window, and and the dodger is on! 

We're also grateful for our gracious neighbor on Twinkle [thanks Judge!] who allowed us to sew out of the rain on his back deck. No way were we going to get this rigid 10ft section of windshield down into the dinette area, maneuver it around, and get it sewed into the dodger material.

First fitting, without windshield in yet. Never mind the pressure washer in the foreground.

Twinkle

Set up on the back deck.

Bill working on my Sailrite machine.

We always tell Gus to get back on his own boat when he wanders down the dock too far, he mostly complies. While we were over on Twinkle, he spent the whole time keeping an eye on us, and loudly telling us to "get back on your own boat!"

Gus keeping watch from the cooler.

We finally installed the dodger for fitting, we didn't take the protective plastic off as we tweaked, stretched, and fitted it to the frame, just in case we needed to take it down again for alterations.

In place.

Gus has to do his job as Chief Quality Control Officer.

He approves.

Gus also had to approve the dinghy cover, I thought it was done until Bill pointed out that I had forgotten to put the slits in the canvas to install the center bench seat. Oops.... so off it must come for some adjustments.

This is nice....

We finished our tweaking, and did the great reveal!

We love the clarity we have now!

We still have the connector window between the dodger, and bimini to do, and that will be made with the Makrolon also,  and bottom snaps to stretch things further, so we've left our awning up for now.

Gus loves to sit under the awning, he's outside watching the goings on, and sheltered. He'll be bummed when it comes down.

Here is a post listing all the materlials we uses, why we chose them, and links to sources.

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.