One of the inescapable truths about owning an old boat is, well… it’s old! If you’re pushing 45, like my Down East schooner Britannia, many things need renovating or completely replacing, writes Roger Hughes.

One of the more common things that often need attention is the restoration of the boat headlining.

Let’s start by using the correct terminology for ‘headlining or ceiling’.

On a boat the ceilings are not the headlinings or ceiling at all, the correct nautical term is deckheads.

Don’t ask me why, but ‘ceilings’ are the wooden slats that are fitted on the sides of a hull, usually in cabins – notably in the focsle.

They do make a small cabin seem wider, but they can be devilishly difficult to clean behind – but that’s another story.

The overhead linings on Britannia had irritated my wife and me from the time we first bought the boat.

It was the usual vinyl material with a cloth felt backing, stretched and stapled between the deck beams throughout the whole length of the boat, including both heads.

Originally, I’m sure it was a nice white colour, but over the years it had faded into a dirty beige.

You know – the colour of cigarette smoke, which at least one previous owner must have emitted in voluminous clouds.

It was much too far gone to clean, and frequently fell to pieces upon trying.

Changing the boat’s rig from a ketch to a schooner didn’t help either, because it meant bolting new fittings through the deck – things like eye bolts, winches, rope jammers, liferaft cradles, etc, and not least, relocating the main mast, which now came right through the centre of the saloon.

I had to cut the boat headlining to install all these things and the only way I could think of to repair the slits was brown masking tape, which didn’t match too well at all.

The vinyl soon looked like a patchwork of quickly applied sticking plasters, and I would notice visitors glancing upwards, but politely saying nothing.

Eventually ‘replace vinyl’ came to the top of my ‘to-do’ list, but even thinking about it on a 50-footer gave me palpitations.

The saloon overhead alone was 9ft wide and 11ft long, consisting of five full-width sections between the wooden deck beams.

In addition, there were three other cabins, two bathrooms, and two corridors.

I certainly didn’t want to replace the liners with the same material, because it seemed to me to be quite a skilled operation – to first hold the floppy stuff in place, then fasten it so that it was smooth between the beams.

The soft material is also very difficult to keep clean. I found a more suitable replacement material in my local home improvement store.

It’s called plank panelling and is plastic (PVC) tongued and grooved planking, often used as wainscot panels on house walls.

Each board is 7in wide and ¼in thick and it comes in packs 8ft long. It has two different sides, one moulded with two strips 3½in wide, and the other side with three thinner strips.

I decided to use the two-strip side.

An important benefit, particularly when used on a boat, is the rot and mildew-free lifetime guarantee, and the ability to wash it properly with soap and water.

I also thought the added thickness to the vinyl would give better thermal insulation from a hot deck.

Boat headlining removal

The first operation was to remove the old vinyl from a section between the beams.

It was secured with mild steel staples, (and every single one was rusty), into a wooden bead which was in turn stapled to the beams.

Every foot of liner contained roughly 24 staples, and on a 45-footer that means an awful lot of staples!

I cut the vinyl with a sharp Stanley knife along both sides and ends of the beams, close to the staples, whereupon the lining frequently dropped on my head.

It contained nearly five decades of dust and more than a few dead cockroaches. (It always amazes me that cockroaches don’t seem to decompose over years…)

The remedy for this was to wear my wife’s shower cap, after which, for some inexplicable reason she insisted on buying a new one.

After the material had been stripped out of a section, now came the monotonous job of removing all the old staples from the wooden bead to which the cloth had been fixed.

Luckily the teak bead was still in good condition and I used a thin blade flat-head screwdriver to prize the staples up, one at a time, then lever them out with long-nosed pliers.

Each section between the beams contained more than 500 staples.

The new plastic panels were self-supporting between the approximate 2ft-apart beams, so I found I could secret nail them to the beads with one-inch stainless steel panel pins.

Replacing boat headlining: panel installation

To cut the panels, I mounted my mitre saw in the cockpit, and it sliced through them like cutting through butter.

Unfortunately, it only made a 6in-wide cut, so I had to turn the board over, and then very carefully finish the cut from the other side.

A sliding compound saw would have been better to cut straight through a 7in-wide panel, but on boats, you learn to use the tools you have.

The laser guide on the saw proved invaluable, firing an accurate red line down the cut.

The material can also be cut with a sharp knife, but that’s a slow process and hard on the hands.

I cut my first piece off an 8ft-long board, slightly longer than the space between the beams.

I then held it up between the beams, exactly down the centreline of the boat, which I’d marked with a thin string, fastened from one end of the saloon to the other.

The deck beams were remarkably parallel to each other, but each individual panel still had to be checked and sometimes trimmed to butt seamlessly against the beam.

I marked the other end of the panel using a wooden ruler against the opposite beam and scored a line with a pencil.

All this cutting meant I had to climb the six steps into the cockpit, carefully cut to the line, then back down to try the fit, then frequently back up again to make minute adjustments to seat the panel snugly between the beams.

Next, I drilled pilot holes with a 1/16in drill, into the corner tongues of the panel to stop the pins from splitting the edge, then I nailed the small thin pins in at a 45° angle into the wooden bead.

After I’d hammered my fingers a few times I held the pins with long-nosed pliers, then drove them home with a nail punch.

I did consider glueing the panels in place, but then they’d have been practically impossible to remove if I ever needed to bolt another fitting through the deck.

I have since actually removed a section to fit a new through-deck fitting, then replaced them exactly as before.

The next panel was measured and cut exactly the same, then tapped into the grooves of the adjacent panel, (which covered the pins), then secured with pins on the other edge of the panel.

It was all easy enough, and I soon got into the swing of measuring and cutting, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t make a few wrong cuts and even found myself trying to mount a panel upside down more than once.

When I came to the ends of a section, where the last panel met the saloon sides, they were all different shapes, with tapers and rounded sides, the edges of which also needed chamfering to form a seamless fit against the cabin sides.

Here I had to make accurate cardboard templates, then cut a board to the exact shape. All the side panels had to have templates, throughout the whole length of the boat.

I’d removed the overhead lights with the old vinyl cloth, so they had to be re-screwed through the new panels and into the underside of the deck.

This also helped to hold the panels in place. It was slow progress, but quite gratifying to eventually see a completely new clean section of panels, sitting between the beams.

There’s a butterfly hatch in the saloon and the frame edges had to be extended before I could infill that section.

Month’s endeavour

The saloon took nearly a week of full-time work to complete, then another three weeks to work through the whole boat.

The longer panels in the bathrooms and bedrooms had to be supported to stop them from sagging.

I did this by screwing up into the under deck and covering the screw with a white plastic snap-on cap. The section under the aft cabin bed was especially tricky.

I had to lie on my back on the bed to measure, then cut and nail the panels in place.

But it was worth it to have such a clean overhead above the bed. I used 10 packs of panels and made about 200 cuts.

I removed more than 4,000 rusty staples, and pre-drilled and nailed some 400 pins in place—one at a time.

It was tedious, back-aching work, continuously reaching upwards, and my arms ached for days afterwards.

But we now have a very professional-looking deckhead throughout the whole boat that has noticeably improved the appearance and caused a few compliments as well.

And yes, we do call it the ceiling, anyway, the proper ceilings have long been replaced with white plastic board, which is much easier to clean.

There has also been a noticeable reduction in the heat felt through the deck on blistering hot Florida days.

The effort has probably also increased the value of our old boat.

Cost and materials

• Cost: The total cost of material was around £200, but I shudder to think how much it would have cost to have had it all professionally installed.
• Materials: Plank panelling came from an online supplier of UPVC home building products in 8ft-long panels, three to a pack. Also countless boxes of panel pins.

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