Dinghy cruising boom tent ideas

Boom tents are great. They are what turns your cockpit into a patio.

The one in the link you posted looks very nice and comfy but if the wind kicks in it will give you grief.

There are two ways to go with cockpit shelter. One is an awning and the other is a tent. What I am saying here applies to almost any yacht no matter what size.

An awning needs frames and or battens and ties. An awning is usually not aerodynamic for the yacht and usually needs to be pulled down when the wind gets up and the rain starts falling.

This is not the time you want to be buggerising around with a large area of flapping sail material.

A well set up boom tent is the antithesis of the above and when the wind gets up and the rain starts falling, the cockpit party can usually continue.

To have a good boom tent you need to THINK of it as another of your sails.

Why? Because it has windage and if your sails flap they will flog themselves to death and destruction (stitching lets go, more parts of it flap and it just gets worse) and so too will a boom tent that is not correctly set.

So THINKING of a boom tent as a SAIL, the BOOM become the ridge pole of the tent. Before deploying the BOOM tent the BOOM needs to be secured correctly so that it does not swing or flop side to side when the boat rocks.

Most mainsails have a tack, head, clew,foot, luff and leech.

The shape of the boom tent sail is going to be usually a trapezium having a parallel front and rear edge but non parallel sides so it can be thought of as a symetrical sail.

The tack is the eyelet in the middle of the leading edge of the sail/tent and needs to be securely affixed to the mast.
The clew is the eyelet in the middle of the rear edge of the sail/tent and needs to be outhauled just like the mainsail.

This sail is symetrical so it has two heads, luffs and leeches and this sail is being set horizontally.

The heads are the two forward corners of the sail which need to be tensioned out next ie tension the luffs. Along this edge an intermediate eyelet is recommended to ensure the luff does not flap or fold on itself.

What remains to be done it to tension out the leech of the sail (the port and starboard edges) progressively to the rear edges.

If you do this the boom tent will handle almost any weather as long as there are no parts of the tent flapping.

I got caught out at anchor with the boom tent up when it blew up to 30 knots fairly quickly. I kept an eye on it and tensioned up where there was a bit of slack in the rig to prevent flapping.

After a few hours of the increased weather I became confident enough in the rig to leave it up. This was on a 42 ft yacht so the tent had a big area that would have been a big effort and drama to take down.

It blew all night and the tent never gave a moment of drama. It kept the yacht headed into the wind and we sailed home the next day with it in place.

Cheers Cisco and Happy Camping.

Thanks cisco, yep looking for something that can stop rain coming in from the side so there will be some windage issues. as long as the boat points into the wind whilst on anchor wouldn't really matter...although a strong tidal flow in the opposite direction to the wind could create a bit of a mess.

i have a few old alloy poles from some wornout tents so will need to recruit a sewer with a heavy sewing machine to help me out. i'm thinking light canvass if i can find some somewhere.

cheers, Dunebug