Not a great day today all, it being Fogging Day here in Maine...
For those not in-the-know, this sad day is when you drain the lower unit lube, refill it, pull off all the needed stuff (and accumulated junk), put the Fogging Oil to the cylinders of the outboard -- and then put 'er away until the next season.
Yes, it will be a long 5 to 5.5 months until my new-to-me Arima fishing boat sees the light of day again...
Here in the northeast, without a garage that's big enough for this boat, and not wanting to pay about "half a levergun" on inside storage elsewhere, it's important to make a structure that will shed the snow and ice really well. I thought some of the things I did this year might provide some ideas to others who face the same dilemma...
On my old 15' bow-rider, I had a low cover which was fairly flat, but we could easily reach it to shovel any built-up snow or ice off the cover. Since the roof of my Arima is 10' off the ground, that wouldn't be possible this year, so I designed a cover high enough to really shed the snow or ice off the tarp.
From this bow-on shot, you can see there's very little area where snow will build up before it slides right to the ground. The basic frame is wood and there are braces of plywood in key spots to take the load. My older brother used to use 2" PVC pipes for the basic framing, but those those didn't hold up after a few years. When we were growing up, we always used wood for its strength and some "give" if the wind hits it hard. Those PVC pipes work well for liquids and if supported well, but when full of air and unsupported -- they had no strength at all. So I went with a wooden base frame. From this angle, you can see the ribs which go down each side and form a whale-skeleton-like shape (that's what my daughter said when she was inside it, she felt "just like Jonah".) Despite what I said about larger PVC pipes, the ribs are 3/4" PVC pipes covered with cheap pipe insulation. Since I wanted a steep angle to shed the snow, I used a heat gun to form the ribs around the top beam. After about 25 seconds on high, the PVC would give and you could bent it to shape; then remove the heat and she'll cool in the shape I needed. Here's a shot from the stern quarter, and you can also see the wooden A frames which support the top beam. That's only a piece of strapping, but it's secured along its length and with no snow on it, I'm sure it will hold up well. You get a good view of the extreme pitch of the roof on this shot too, especially once you get past the cabin. Sharp-eyed viewers may see all the white wire zip-ties we used to secure the PVC ribs to the frames and beam. Then we used black electrical tape to secure the foam insulation. Any sharp spots were covered with pieces of old carpeting stapled in place. Finally, here is she is -- at this point my daughter referred to her as a "giant silver armadillo!" I guess that's OK, she gave me 1.5 days of help, so she can call it what she wants. Next year, if there's no bigger garage available as an option, we should be able to do the job in less time as we'll only have to do the assembly and no "engineering" (thinking, testing things, measuring, cutting, re-measuring and re-cutting a few times
etc...).
So now we're facing 5+ months of a too-long and too-cold winter (and it hasn't even started yet... 
) until we rise and spend half a day cutting dozens of zip-ties and unwrapping yards of black tape. Luckily, we wrapped the last 1/2 inch of the tape back on itself to serve as a "tab", so we won't have to hunt for all the ends to undo.Ah well, it was a great summer while it lasted, but Fogging Day came too soon once again...
Protect your boats and keep your powder dry... And maybe now, with this big chore out of the way, I can get over to the range a few times before deer season hits.
Tight groups,
Old No7
You will have to give an update once the snow hits and let us know how it holds up.
