Bimini redesign

[Nancy]

We need to make some changes to our bimini. Here's a photo of it earlier this summer. It folded to the stern, but it was too whippy from side to side when under way. What I really disliked was the slope up from the back of the pilothouse to the first hoop.

exterior-2-051213-1600.JPG

So John adjusted the forward hoop. The bimini is now level with the pilothouse, and it looks much better. However, the legs of the forward hoop now sit about 18" lower on the legs of the aft support, and obviously, when folded back, the top of the forward support no longer matches the arch of the aft hoop. Grr.

In addition, one of the zippers has developed some misaligned teeth over the summer. I'm not sure how that could have happened as I put on the bimini with no problem in the spring. But that needs to be dealt with as now we can't even remove the bimini because the zipper gets stuck on the screwed-up teeth.

So the challenge is to redesign the bimini so that it works. The fabric isn't in great shape, so will probably be replaced at the same time.

Has anyone done a bimini frame that disassembles into small enough pieces to be stowed on board?

[jcollins]

Nancy,
Afterglow came with a very nice bimini. But, we like an open cockpit. It was just too much hardware for us. I removed the frame and found an anchor shade at West Marine. It is smaller than the one in the picture below and just covers the cockpit area. We use it at anchor or at the marina. It takes about 10 minutes to put up and obviously you can't cruise with it.