Manufacturing a new boat tent

It is necessary to have a place where the boat is sheltered, partly to be able to work, but also to minimize maintenance in the future. The decay of both varnish and wood is delayed if the boat is not exposed to the fall and winter weather.

In order to have enough space in the tent, the dimensions must be 12 meters x 4 meters x 4.5 meters, and the price for such a tent would be around DKK 22,000. I think that is a lot of money, so I decided to make one myself, which can be done for less than half the price.

I have chosen to make the frames out of 35 x 75 mm battens with corners made out of 40 x 80 mm square tube. You can see the corners in the picture above - they still need to be galvanized.

To keep the tent on the ground, I placed the boat on top of 3 pieces. pressure-impregnated 100 x 100 mm beams, which are connected in each side with two additional100 x 100 mm beams in front of and behind the boat. So a total of 5 beams on the ground. In the sides, I mount 47 x 100 mm battens with a distance of 4 m

in between them. I think that will be a strong  foundation for my tent.

The posts will be bolted to the battens on both sides and the tarpaulin will be fastened to the battens with rubber straps.

January 28, 2008:
The frames for the tent are finished and assembled - now we are just waiting for a couple of days with reasonably quiet weather so we can get the tarpaulin put on. We still have to weld the ends on the roof-tarpaulin, but this is easiest when the roof-tarpaulin is in place. In addition, we also have to fit the hooks to the sides.

February 10, 2008:
After a long period of windy weather, it is finally so calm that we can finish the tarpaulin for the tent and mount it. When we welded the roof together between Christmas and New Year, we had rolled it together in a way that we could easily roll it out on top of the frames. It took approx. 10 minutes to get the 5 x 12 meter tarpaulin in place. The next thing was to weld the ends onto the roof with a hot-air gun. They are made so that they can be zipped together in the middle - otherwise, it's difficult to store the tarpaulin in a sensible way. We had borrowed a hydraulic lift for the purpose, so it was quite easy and only took us a few hours.

March 1, 2008:
Now the tent is done. We have had quite wild weather here for the past 2 weeks - especially today, where we have had a storm with gusts of hurricane force. But the tent is still standing, so the tent has shown its strength. I have put a number of ratchet straps on each side to keep the tent in shape - there is a lot of pressure when the wind comes directly in on the side of the tent. I also hung up the neon lights, so now I can begin with doing what it is all about, namely working on the boat.

Here is a collection of pictures showing the process: