Thunderbird is docked in the marina with her bow pointed South. So the sun comes up on the Port side and sets on the Starboard. I have found that venetian blinds are the best solution for this situation. As the sun comes up, we can have blinds on the Starboard side closed and avoid the glaring sun and keep the boat from over heating. And around noon, we can close the Starboard blinds and and open the Port side ones. It works very well.
So during the refit I started with the Captains forward cabin. There are four port holes rather than windows in there. And as port holes are a nice feature in a boat, I wanted them to show. I find the venetian blinds, when left open, show off the port holes rather than cover them up, and when closed they really give you the privacy needed and they also block out the sun.
With that working out so well, I went through the entire boat with venetian blinds. It was quite a chore. They don't exactly come in convenient sizes for this application, but with a lot of fitting, cutting and customization, we now have blinds on all the windows.
I only made one mistake and that was the four pilot house windows. The blinds I ordered for those windows were too wide an expanse between the vertical blind supports. All of the blinds throughout the boat only have about 8 inches between the upright blind supports, but in the pilot house the expanse was around 16 inches. These are only the simplest PVC blinds so after a few years in the hot summer sun those blinds started to sag in the middle, as you can see in the above picture.
So, this week Dan and I, took down the old ones and again custom fit new ones on all the pilot house windows.
And this time they have three vertical supports (barely visible) per blind, which is what was needed. That extra center support will really help. But, as before, they don't have a ready to order size available for these windows.
So it was a full day's work, but they turned out great.
IT'S DONE AND I AM PLEASED.
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