Village Rainbows

 Not all ideas are manifest to be successful. Ideas drawn out on a piece of paper, no matter how carefully they may have been drawn to scale become something quite different when reproduced in reality. These are two truths that I learned this past year.

My Mana 24 catamaran has a large and very open deck which is ideal for sailing but provides no shelter when camping on board. Last winter I set about to design and sew a tent which would fulfill that limitation. I was partially successful, but my design was deficient in one important aspect. More on that later.

The tent project followed the completion of a sewing ‘first’ for me – a new sail for the boat, an asymmetrical spinnaker and launching chute (another post coming soon). There was an incentive for a new sewing project – the acquisition of my mother’s 1956 Singer Model 191B sewing machine.

The tent design attempted to address the desire for shelter on the deck while being still being able to access the hull cabins. I wanted to be able to easily open the hatches without impediment from the tent and so I came up with the idea of an arched roof, suspended between the two masts and formed by flexible tent poles. My scale drawing called for a height of 96 inches in order for the hatch to clear the tent wall.

Two ingredients were required – tent material and tent poles. A search on the internet came up with willing suppliers. Ripstop By the Roll have an extensive selection of materials available and from them I ordered 35 yards of 1.9 ounce white rip-stop nylon plus 8 yards of 2.2 ounce ripstop nylon in racing red. From another accommodating supplier, Tent Pole Technologies came four tent poles, each 129.5 inches long. Time to get to work.

Of course, when I was doing the drawing and ordering the material, I really had no clear sense of just how big the tent would be or how much material it would involve. It was only after starting to cut and piece and sew it together did I fully appreciate the undertaking. I was soon sewing 24 foot long seams to join panels forming the top and walls of the tent. Mom’s old Singer machine was not nearly so phased by that as I was.

The end panels came with their own challenge, with 8 foot zippers sewn in just off-centre to allow access from from both the bow and the stern of the boat. The basement seemed at times to be filled with rip-stop nylon!

The big test came in July during our annual camping/sailing event, the Elbow Run 2019, on Lake Diefenbaker, with seven sailboats and ten sailors gathered. The new tent looked rather impressive that first night, and the guys teased me about the size, suggesting that it was large enough to be a dance hall, or better yet, a floating conference room.

My crew mate and cousin, Russell, and I set about making our living quarters comfortable and cooking our evening meal on board while others were resigned to cooking in the open beside their tents. Life was good.

Things were not so congenial however when the wind started to blow later in the week, as you can see in the following photos.

Yes, things did get a bit wild, and on two separate nights we decided we would fare better in the wind without the tent!! The big sidewalls, having nothing to support them, could not hold their shape. There were other issues also. I had not taken into account that the main sail would prevent closure of the bow entrance to the tent, and so half of that end wall flapped continuously in the wind.

BUT, the sewing did not come unravelled. AND the rip-stop nylon proved that it could easily handle the wind. AND most importantly, the tent proved the worthiness of a shelter when camping on an open deck catamaran. So, its back to the drawing board and Mom’s old Singer machine this winter to come up with Mana Deck Tent Mark II.