The kicker of my beam is constantly chafing on the front of my bimini top when the beam is centered and the main sheet is closed. Not good… since sailing without bimini means too much UV radiation in a meditarranean summer, chafing is inevitable when sailing close hauled. Meaning the fabric gets destroyed.
I made a half hearted attempt to alleviate the problem using fiber-reinforced tape. Well – it did help. But not for long (see the pictures below). Thinking of a better material I came up with good old leather. Amazon delivered a nice little patch which I brought with me to Greece beginning of August. And a few days later I set out to start stitching with my Speedy Stitcher. I will do a separate post on that device – or maybe a youtube video – now that I did LOTS of stitching with it; that leather patch on the bimini top was only project number 3 (after a loose zipper on the winter cover and a loose zipper on the starboard side of the lazy-bag). And much more stitching was to come – hours and hours – little did I know.
So I first adapted the tear with tape, stitched the whole thing, then applied the leather patch on top to hopefully protect that spot. I should update this blog to let you know whether it worked by the end of this summer…