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Home. Association Forum Ships Store Cruising Racing Technical Tips Photo Gallery - New Boat Search - Updated Manuals & Brochures Swap Meet Links Officer Flag Line & Staff Bylaws & Constitution   Members Area Join the Association   Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ. The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.	Bear's Abode - Misc. Modifications This tip submitted by Ted Kuenzli This shows I build a support frame for the storage tarps. This is cloths line which l weave back and forth over the mast and under each safety line. I always double tarp the boat and the support frame holds the tarps without damage to the safety lines and keeps the water and snow from collecting. This is how I store my companionway boards. Nothing fancy and very straight forward; but, they have done the job for four years. You also can see one of two plugs for the solar panels which I leave lay on the cabin top. l have attached a cable to each panel which gets lock when I close up the hatch. This picture shows two great storage areas for the many extra things we need to cruise and stay on the boat every weekend. The two holes in the back of each seat gives us the space which is wasted on most boats. One boat in our club used 2 x 4's which they attached with long screws for the shelf. I glued small cleats to both sides of the boat. Those are sheets of plywood which have thumb holes to easily remove them, if necessary, which are laying on the cleats. I then painted the inside of the hull to match the interior of the boat. The area behind the black doors are great for my peanut butter jars which store all the little things. The other side have narrow trays to kept things organized. The last set of pictures show my solution for raising and lowering the mast by myself. I do this without any help and actually find it very easy. The mast holder in the stern is two - 2 x 4 x 8's nailed together with a boat trailer roller between two short 2 x 4's at the top. You can see that this is attached to the stern and the support on top of the stern rail. The bottom is held in place with a line which goes through the drain holes. I lift the end of the mast up and lay it on the roller before I then roll the mast forward to attach the bolt in the mast step. The A frame is the key to doing this by yourself. l made the frame out of conduit pipe which has a small piece of wood in each end before applying heat to flatten and drilling holes. The frame is attached to the deck by using a small piece of gas pipe with holes attached to the deck plates for the forward outer shrouds. See diagram for more detail. I attach an halyard to one ring at the top of the frame and a line for the bow pulley to the other ring. The bow pulley line goes back to the cabin top wench which controls the speed going up or coming down.