Here's a temporary hack. I think it will work for a few years. We'll see.

We have a custom-built "Wave Stopper" hard-topped dodger. See, for example, "Annapolis VI: ‘Done'" for some information on this. It was (7 years ago) a wonderful thing. Sturdy. Dry. Clear windows. Hand-holds. Really nice. For the most part, it still is really nice.

We screwed down solar panels without any fuss or serious concern about the dodger's strength. See Week 44 Back in the saddle" for the (then) new solar panels on the top of the dodger.

The problem with the HDPE plastic is it's brittle. So, the normal flexing of the steel supports in the presence of wind and boat motion leads to tiny cracks around the supports.

You can see the hand-hold and underneath it a rectangle of HDPE with 8 screws in it.

And a crack underneath it.

This is trying to keep the crack from spreading for another few years.

At some point, we're going to have to ditch this, and replace it with something a bit less prone to fatigue. We're getting a new bimini — the old fabric has reached the end of it's service life. If we can drag the hard dodger out for five more years, hat would be the perfect time to replace both.

The steel supports are in almost acceptable places. CA would like the dodger and bimini to be a few inches higher. We've had the mainsail recut to lift the boom. We have not (yet) hoisted the main to see how it fits, but if things worked out properly, we should one able to raise the bimini a few inches.

Right now, a taller bimini would lead to chafe on the aft-end of the solar panels. A possible solution is to use a slightly longer z-bracket (or a shim) to tip the panel up a bit to avoid chafe. Or. To rebuild the dodger top to sit at a slight angle.

Rebuilding the hard top

Sail magazine ran a great article, "How to Build a Hard-top Dodger," with a number of helpful construction details.

The idea is to start with a cardboard mockup, use this to cut plywood panels. Stitch the panels together and then plan out the mounting brackets and other structural members. Some holes will be pre-drilled, for example, and need to be drilled and glassed in properly.

The article has the phrase "put the dodger in a convenient place for fiberglassing." This seems to mean "find a garage to work in." The cover does need to be glassed inside and out, so it would be helpful to have a place to flip it over to work on the inside. Maybe this can be done afloat: glass in the outside of the dodger, flip it forward onto the foredeck to glass in the inside.

The follow-up part of this is fairing the structure. Trying this on the boat seems to be potentially hazardous: it would spill resin dust into the waterway.

Another possibility is working on it while on the hard. It's dangerous trying to lower this bulky, awkward thing to the ground, but, we could certainly flip it over to glass and sand on the hard. We could even use the sander and the shop-vac to avoid spreading plastic dust everywhere.

My idea (right now) is to use the existing steel, making it relatively easy to mount the the thing. The existing windows are held in place with elegant bolt ropes, allowing them to be slid into a track, avoiding any gaps. I'd like to preserve this idea. Indeed, if I was really good, I could get the new bolt-rope tracks to match the old and reuse the old windows. (The perfection required seems unachievable.)

More sensible is to hire a canvas maker build new windows to fit the new structure. The current acrylic windows will (by then) be 12 or so years old.

If I was going completely crazy, I'd also build an arch for a mainsheet traveler. This involves serious load-bearing construction, so it would involve structural work on the after cabin-top. It needs to be high enough that someone could scramble under it to use the aft cabin entrance, but low enough that you didn't need to raise the boom any higher to fit the mainsheet block and tackle.

For now, we're patching and reinforcing. It's cheaper and (so far) seems workable.