The Scottish scenery is fashioned by the weather so proper protection was essential for our planned trip there. However, I was quoted around £1,000 for a professional sprayhood including frame and patterning – so I made one myself. It wasn’t too tricky.
First I made a pattern for the stainless steel hoops out of cardboard, making sure that it would not foul the boom while close hauled or during a gybe. I’d already bought the end fittings and deck mountings from Kayospruce so I knew how far off the deck the ends of the tube needed to be.
Buying and having the tubes bent cost £290. I set these on the boat in the required position with tape and string so patterning paper (£9.40), which is waterproof, translucent and easy to use, could be taped over the frame to mock up the sprayhood. It took two hours to create a pretty accurate mock-up (if you mark the centre line you only have to make one half…), which was then carefully removed and transferred onto the sprayhood fabric allowing for the necessary seams. The windows were stuck into position on the back with double sided tape and then sewn round before cutting out the fronts to avoid distortion.

With fabric from a previous job (£59.55), all I needed was 3m of Velcro (£2), 1m of 0.50mm clear PVC (£6.46), 12 turnbuckles (£19.27), a couple of eyelets (5p) and half a metre of shockcord (60p) – and an ancient Singer zig-zag sewing machine!