New Cratch Cover

One of our first major purchases for Albert, when we bought her in late 2003, was a new cratch cover. The old cover looked OK but soon the zips and stitching soon started failing. We chose a new cover from Wilson's because they had made a tonneau  and some hatch covers for our previous boat and we had been happy with their work. It did us proud lasting ten years but recently some of the stitching had begun to fail.

Albert's new cratch cover

Because we had had a small cover repair carried out by Tim Garland (who is very much local to us), I chose Tim to quote for the new cover. I knew there was a family connection between Tim and Gardland Sails in Bristol, and I had always suspected that the original had been from Garland's in Bristol. When Tim visited Yardley Gobion Wharf and looked at Albert's fittings (which were retained by Wilsons) he confirmed that the original was more than likely from Garland Sails in Bristol, probably by his dad. He noted that his dad liked to use quite a few fittings to hold the cover down since he came from a sail-making background!

I have to say that fitting a cover is a skilled craft. Getting the pattern correct is obviously very skillful but even the final fitting is not that straightforward particularly in cold weather like today - there was an icy wind and a layer of ice in the marina. It involved accurately locating the stud fittings and punching them into the cloth and drilling an tapping the hull fittings.

Tim Garland making the cratch cover pattern

The new cover was measured up in November and today Tim fitted it. We are delighted with its matt finish and clean style and we look forward to it giving good service - the other two lasted around ten years each.