Designing and building Rosalind’s hardtop
The idea to built the hardtop had been on our minds for several years so we were happy,
in September 2021, to start the design process. We quickly decided on a foam cored fiberglass hardtop built on a male mold.
Onboard measurements were made to get the dimensions, shape, camber, and connection to the existing hard dodger. The hardtop size drove the selection of all the solar panels and grab handles. There were three main challenges:
- How to make the hardtop rigid without making it too heavy,
- What type of connection we would use to connect it to the hard dodger, and
- What type of supports we would use aft.
A number of options were considered and we arrived at these final solutions:
- We would fiberglass Coosa board (a composite boat building material that can be used instead of marine plywood) all around the interior perimeter of the hardtop to solve the flexibility/ rigidity issue.
- We would build a “bridge” piece to connect the hardtop to the hard dodger. This was necessary as the aft (back end) of the hard dodger is not straight. The idea behind the “bridge connector piece” is that it will get fiberglassed to the hard dodger and offer a flat surface for the hardtop to connect with. This avoids having to built a hardtop that perfectly matches the curves/ imperfections of the aft end of the hard dodger.
- We decided on custom made aluminum supports. We designed them, bought the aluminum, cut everything to size and had them welded. The design allows us to make the final vertical measurement onboard and cut the tube to size before final assembly.
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Rosalind on her mooring on a calm summer day. The West River is a beautiful place. |
Here are some pictures of the design and fabrication of the hardtop. It has been a great project.
This has been a big project. We built the hardtop in our basement and before we started we measured very carefully to check that we could get it out. Once finished we were able to get it out of the basement, without an inch to spare! The project took a while and we are really looking forward to the installation. It will be great to have weather protection in the cockpit and the 200W of solar will be essential for charging our batteries. On the next we will share an unexpected decision based on last summers’ sea trials…
