This may be as impractical as my poorly-thought-out "gimbaled two-burner campstove" idea, but what about flexible fiberglass wands made for dome tents, arched over the cockpit to form a sort of "conestoga wagon" frame, so that the boom tent takes the shape of, well, a conestoga wagon, or quonset hut? The wands would be seated in the toe-rails (mine are the perforated aluminum found on the older 17's -- not as pretty as teak, but very practical). I gave a mathematician friend the boat's beam and the height I would want the arch at its peak and he gave me the length of the wand. The wands would be segmented and shock-corded as found in dome-tent poles: They would be fed through sleeves on the tent. One of the bimini makers actually uses this principal. Aside from the difficulty of finding dome-tent poles just the right length, what other problems am I overlooking? Perhaps difficulty of setup? I've seen a free-standing half-tube (conestoga wagon/quonset hut) type tent in use on a Drascombe that could also be pitched on a beach.
----- Original Message ----- From: "ron and cathryn goodspeed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 12:52 PM Subject: boom tent w/out lifelines? Greetings , I have been thinking about a boom tent design for "hula pie", [M17 w/o lifelines] that would use the main halyard to pull up on a tab at the peak of the tent giving greater headroom and using a couple of fiberglass battens or 1/2 inch PVC pipe across the boat and tied down to the rails to give it some arch for rain to run off. I would try out this idea first with a tarp or some Tyvek first. What do you think? Maybe connect a sail slide to the end of a batten that ran longitudinally and connected with a T or passed under the cross battens. What would be really slick to use are those bungee/ aluminum tent supports that pull apart and fold up to about 15 inches long. Thanks to all for the exchange of info, photos and ideas, Ron and Cathryn Goodspeed M17 #025 "hula pie" _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
