HEADLININGS
Roger Hughes replaces old vinyl headlinings with easy-to-clean white PVC ‘planking’
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. One of the more common things that often need attention is the restoration of the boat’s 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.
Faded vinyl
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 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.
Daunting task
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, the
