Finishing the interior of your boat with a cloth liner

Tim Lackey, #381, Glissando

The liner fabric product I used is available from Boat/US; item # 172304. There are a few patterns/colors available. Mine is Irish Tweed, color light sand. (p. 538 if you have a 2001 catalog). It has a 1/4" foam backer so it's nice and cushy, and helps hide the texture of the raw fiberglass beneath. I like it--it really makes the inside of the head and vee berth, where I installed it, warmer and much nicer. Installation was...well, OK once I used the right adhesive after all the liner fell down the first time. Forget about the regular spray adhesive--worthless. Use 3M 77 or 3M Super Trim Adhesive and it will stay up nicely. These adhesives are also good because you have the opportunity to pull the liner back if you don't get it lined up quite right, since it doesn't bond permanently right away; you have a minute or two to get positioned. In small areas, it's a breeze to put up. In the vee berth, I was going for the maximum coverage without seams (some seams were unavoidable), so I used full-width and as long as necessary to accomplish that. Smaller pieces would obviously be easier to put up. The liner bends around corners, even the complex curves of the inside of the cabin trunk in the vee berth, quite well, really. You can smooth it out amazingly well, even with the foam backer.

So far, so good--no problems over the past season. It's as good as new, and seems to be well stuck; it was nice to roll over in the berth and come up against a nice soft fabric rather than gross painted fiberglass. I used wood trim to cover the seams and edges where necessary.

Maybe not a perfect or permanent solution, but pretty good all things considered. When I got the boat, I knew there was no way in hell I wasn't covering up the bare fiberglass inside--cold and yucky. It took me a while to figure out what to do. Wood would (ha ha) have been nice, but who has the patience to install 177 strips of wood with 6,342 tiny screws? And what to do on the inside of the cabin trunk? Fabric was the best answer--quick and very effective.

The good 3M adhesives--#77 or Super Trim Adhesive--are strong enough to hold the liner in place without other support, or at least they seem to be after a season. Granted, this is not a ton of time, but if the adhesive was going to fail I think there might have been signs of it by now. The cheap hardware-store spray adhesive I used the first time failed the first night--I came out in the morning and most of the liner was hanging by a few random corners and lying on the bunk. As it is, there are no loose spots--the lack thereof is particularly notable on the corners and tough areas of the cabin trunk forward. I have good faith in these adhesives.

The span in the main cabin isn't that large that I would foresee a problem. The fabric is not heavy--it's light. It's almost like a scrim over the foam, except it's nicer than that--but the top, visible layer is not some heavy, dense fabric at all. It's thin and light. You can have a sample too if you'd like--let me know. By nature of the size of the salon, you'd need probably two widths of fabric to cover the overhead, so you'd have a trim batten in the middle to cover the seam. For the sake of symmetry and appearance, I could see choosing to install it in a few planned-out pieces with appropriately spaced seams and battens--say, along the edges and athwartships across the middle.

I installed the liner before the ports were installed in the forward cabin and head. I just cut it out around the rough openings, and installed the ports right over the top. The seal is on the outside of these ports, at least on my ports, although I used sealant on the inside as well. When the ports are installed, it leaves a nice seamless appearance there and the port helps hold the liner in place. (see photo)

The liner is only temporary in that I might replace portions of it someday--particularly the hull sides in the vee berth. I would prefer a traditional wooden strip ceiling there, with insulation behind. But this is a time consuming, tedious project and there's certainly no rush to do it. I have no plans to replace the liner on the cabin sides and overhead, unless it became stained or something, in which case I would replace in kind.

Mark Petrush

I'd like to second Tim's recommendation of the 3M spray adhesive. We re-lined our boat with yard goods of 1/2" foam from an uphosltery supply house and fabric-backed vinyl from a Jo-Ann Fabric store. We started out using traditional Weldwood contact cement that we were brushing on. This worked, but it was difficult to evenly apply the glue, and then there were the fumes! We switched to the spray glue, and it was a quantum leap better all the way around.

It has been four seasons and we have had no problems with the liner coming loose, although most of the edges are secured with teak trim and/or the interior cabinetry. About the only places where the glue is the only thing holding the liner in place are under the vee-berth shelves and up under the deck at the sheerline, and these are still hanging tight.

I helped a guy put a traditional wood slat ceiling in a Sailstar Corsair once, and like the man says thats a lot of cuts and fasteners - but beyound that, it's a lot of weight to consider. My boat's already a heavy pig without adding more!

Mark Parker, #516, All Ways

One more thought - for the V-berth I chose a dark gray carpet (also with 1/4" foam) It adds to that warm cave like feeling in the V-berth ( I DID put a traditional wood slat ceiling on the sides - didn't add much weight as I only used 1/4" mahogany.) Obviously the carpet would NOT be a good choice in the salon, but mine has a molded liner there.