Ideas to get a “Hinckley” picnic boat-like top

Discussion in 'Boat Design' started by Tinklespout, Jan 14, 2019.

  1. Tinklespout
    Joined: Oct 2012
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    Location: Fl

    Tinklespout Junior Member

    should I do canvas or a hardtop to achieve the look I’d like to have. I have a 1988 21 foot Dixie Cuddy Cabin and what I want the curved top appearance of a Hinckley. Might be hard with only a 22 foot boat. Ideas anyone?
     
  2. Squidly-Diddly
    Joined: Sep 2007
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    Location: SF bay

    Squidly-Diddly Senior Member

    going to be awfully low roof coming back from windshield.

    I'd devise a roof that can be hinged from 3 sides as sun shade, or raised straight up for standing room, but still be lowered and attached to windshield for big totally protected area when underway, and for the Picnic look.

    For quick and easy, use typical door hinges with easy to pull pins (with little leashes to kept from falling overboard) to get multi-function 3 sided hinged unit.

    I'm guessing a tubular alum frame with canvas wrapped over tubes on top, and stretched with paracord under. The paracord web on the ceiling could then be used to store stuff.

    Put some 90 deg "U" track on the gunnels and run the legs into it, with bunch of holes to allow height to be adjusted.

    At a min IMO you want to be able to raise the rear of roof up about 45deg with front still attached to windshield, and be able to raise the whole roof up to standing height.

    Bend the roof tubes about 6" radius downward on the sides and stick legs into the downward bent ends. That should give some lateral strength. For more strength with roof fully raised put an "X" of cordage like old bi-plane at front of roof (more or less out of the way)

    I'm seeing a couple diff 1988 21 foot Dixie Cuddy Cabin types, some with forward superstructure and some not and both appear to have cuddy, but one bigger than other.

    How bout pics of actual boat side view AND pics looking straight down from as high as you can with tape measures pulled across a couple places to give us some scale, mostly for the "human factor" seating etc.

    This might sound crazy but you might use an old car convertible top, turned ***-backwards. The top's rear window would give you some forward vision and the top would raise roof about 20" depending on what car you butcher up.

    IMO you could do some Redneck Engineering and WIDEN the entire auto-based frameworks to mate perfectly with boat, so it doesn't come off as mis-generated mutant craft. Not sure about lengthening. There is a fine line between really cool custom and Bubba-dised DIY.

    The part of auto top frame that normally mates with windshield will be nice sturdy chrome and curved member, and would "work" aesthetically as rear end of roof.

    You could collapse the roof forward (way it went backward on car) and have about 12" of stuff on top of boat's windshield blocking some of that forward vision, but IMO acceptable.

    I think this could be pulled off and could look "correct" and very stylish. More stylish than ANY other boats canvas, and canvas has a certain style that solid just lacks. You'd be leveraging the mega-bucks top tier design talent that went into making the donor car's top look "right". Not even big name yachts builders can spend the same effort on re-working and perfecting the look, especially lots of aesthetic compound curved metal MOVING PARTS that mate perfectly, due to car companies economy of scale.

    While car style roll up windows on your boat might be beyond scope, you should be able to easily cut manually installed fixed panes out of plex-glass that would fit nice and snug into channel of car top's frame, and into "U" track on boat's gunnel. Easy to switch from clear to dark tint, or color to compliment rest of boat and new colored convert-top. Not even most expensive convertible cars have color matching glass!

    Post good side view of boat with tape measures going up and across and I'll try to photoshop a few car tops onto it. I think slightly angled down towards rear would look very sporty, and increase the angle of convert's "rear" (now front) window.

    I used to run old 1960s beater Buick convertibles, and none had power to top, but raising and lowing was easy, and actually quicker to do manually. Good stuff and well engineered should be able to withstand "adaption" (extra stress no one considered)

    You say your from FL? 4:00 "That one of them new boat-cars"

     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2019
  3. Squidly-Diddly
    Joined: Sep 2007
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    Location: SF bay

    Squidly-Diddly Senior Member

    here is company wanting to put car style convt tops on production boats.


    Good graphic at 1:50 mark.

    I still like my idea better, and I guess you could make it fully enclosed by using the mate from the donor's top windshield interface, then fabric down to whereever.
     
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