Rethinking the Boat Cover

When I left Huntington, I decided not to take the frame for my cover, and even cut out the bad parts of the canvas, although, I did keep a lot of it, it's probably only enough to cover her to just below the toerails. However, after surviving the recent cold weather and blizzard without a cover, I'm considering not putting it back on at all. A friend was going to bring the frame over to me, but with the holidays and bad weather, that can't happen for at least another week.

So, what are my options? First off, the reasons for putting on the cover are:

1. to keep the deck dry while I work on the chainplates and finish painting the deck
2. to keep the boat a little warmer while I work on the engine
3. to allow me to keep the sliding hatch partially open while lifting the engine while I pull the transmission

Let's take them one at a time:

1. Since the boat is pretty dry and the chainplate holes are relatively small, I should be able to pull them on a dry day and tape over the hole with duct tape until I'm ready to install the new ones. As for the deck paint, I'll need several days of relatively warm weather to paint and non-skid the decks, even with the cover, so I probably won't even attempt it until spring anyway. At that point, a cover should be a non-issue.
   
2. This may or may not turn into an issue, but I can always tent the cockpit area while I'm working, so I don't think this is a show stopper even without the cover. Also, I doubt it's going to get too much colder than it's been over the last few weeks. So on average, I should be in good shape -- it was over 40 when I got up this morning.
3. Based on conversations with Boston and Bill, I don't think this will be an issue either. As soon as we have a dry day, I'll start working on it again and see how it goes. I don't see any reason why I can't pry and block it up from the bottom.

One other issue is what to do with all the gear in my cockpit lockers. I'll need to clear them out to work on the engine, but without a cover, I'm reluctant to just stack everything on deck. Luckily, it's all waterproof, so it probably doesn't make a difference anyway, but I should be able to stack it all on the foredeck and use some of my excess canvas to cover it.

In fact, this is actually a good opportunity to fabricate the deck covers I was planning to make anyway. Deck covers can help a lot whenever it's either too hot or too cold out. They provide shade in the summer and help insulate the deck in the winter. It might still be nice to have the frame for the cockpit, but I'm not going to let not having it slow me down, especially now that the weather should be clearing up enough to get to work.