By Marissa Neely
In the grand scheme of things, there are few items on a cruising boat that are probably more oriented to your sailing comfort than a dodger, but after a few rounds of bashing into the wind, sailing under the brutal sun, and combating squalls the dodger plays a major role in protection and comfort.
Way back in 2018 my husband Chris and I bought our 1979 Cheoy Lee 41’ named Avocet, with no intentions of cruising. I know, it sounds crazy, but we were fresh out of college, barely 21 and newlyweds that were just excited to make a sailboat our first home and nothing more than that. It was only after the days, months and years of DIY projects where we uncovered more of Avocet’s past life as an ocean cruiser that inspired us to continue her legacy and sail to new horizons. That newfound inspiration subsequently meant we needed to not only make Avocet comfortable to live aboard, but also make her capable of sailing through whatever Poseidon throws our way – which we would soon learn was a LOT.
The canvas dodger that we had inherited aboard Avocet had seen better days; the frame was rickety, the dark blue canvas had been sun bleached to a strange shade of light blue and perhaps the worst trait of all was that the strataglass was as transparent as milk making any sort of attempt to see through it impossible. Although it served us well as a windbreak and had gotten us this far in our journey we knew it was time to upgrade. Originally we had the idea to create a completely ridgid hard dodger and forgo the hassle of sewing canvas, but then at the advice of notable sailors (such as Lin Pardey) we decided to create a hardtop that could support our Renogy 100 solar panels with canvas sides that can be removed for easy cleaning and air flow on the particularly stuffy days at anchor.
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