Dighny Chaps

We splurged when we left Canada in 2014 and purchased a brand new pvc dinghy and motor.  It's a beaut, double aluminium bottom, good-sized inflatable tubes.  It's our "go-fast" boat and easily gets up on plane.

A pvc inflatable is common in Canada, but in the strong southern sun the uv quickly damages the material.  We try to keep it covered but every summer while we are in storage it seems the cover either blows off or disintegrates.  It's also a bit of a pain to constantly cover and uncover the dinghy every time we want to use it. We very much wanted to prolong the life of our dinghy.

The vision

Then we discovered dinghy chaps.  Dinghy chaps are covers that are constructed of uv protective sunbrella and are designed to cover the tubes of the dinghy only, leaving access to all the handles, bench supports etc. It very conveniently stays in place as the dinghy is used. Perfect.  That's just what we needed.  The only problem was that the canvas businesses down here were far too busy to take on the work as they are still catching up from hurricane Irma damage, and the one we did find was quoting a pretty big price tag.  Here's a picture I found on the internet.

So, having sewn not much more than a few curtains years ago, I decided to take on the project. Heck, I took home-ec in grade seven.  It couldn't be THAT hard, could it??

I got out my credit card (gulp) and ordered an inexpensive heavy duty Singer sewing machine, eight yards of sunbrella, UV thread and a few other supplies from Sailrite (online store).  As I was waiting for my supplies to arrive I began to get a little obsessive about it, constantly talking about it to any unfortunate person I could corner, getting up in the night to sketch little diagrams or watch YouTube instructional videos, worried I had bitten off more than I could chew (again).  Here's how it went:

I purchased dollar store shower curtain liners and climbing back and forth from the boat to the dinghy to make a pattern.  I used painters tape to hold the plastic down in the breeze, which was tricky sometimes.  The painter's tape worked the best as it made it easy to make minor adjustments to the position.

laying out a pattern using a dollar store shower curtain

 Cape Coral Yacht Basin has a very cool workshop which we had access to.  It was blistering hot out, so with a fan pointed directly on me, I laid everything out on long tables and taped it down, measured, then measured again, and very nervously cut.

Super work area at this marina

A bunch of folks pitched in to help us pull the dinghy from the water, which made the chore so much easier than climbing over the gunnels of the boat or off the dock for every little measurement.  Thanks guys!!

Here's the fabric in place with all the handles and everything cut out. Alleluia! It fits!  It is actually in three pieces, one for the bow and one for each side.

Now the hard part.  Sewing.  It was enormously difficult to sew around each little cut-out as each one required that I tightly roll up yards of stiff fabric to squish it into the little gap in the sewing machine between the needle and edge of the machine.  It was painstakingly slow.  It took three or four short workdays in the heat to first figure out how to use the sewing machine and then to get it all sewed up.

And here's the final product.  It's not as perfectly tailored as the professionals might do, and some of the seams may not be as strong, but so far it's stayed in place and it's doing it's job, keeping that dreaded uv off our dinghy...  even if it is a little fugly.

Final product.  It's not a thing of beauty,
but it does stay on while underway
and will hopefully prolong the life of our dinghy.