Marinas charge a ton, contractors will charge around $10-$15 per foot. We spend about $200 on Seabird, our DE 32′ sailboat with a 4′ bowsprit.

It’s about that time of year, when the rain turns to snow, sleet, hail and various other forms of nasty. That means it’s also time for all the beautiful boats on the docks and on the hard to transform their gracious lines into a bubble of plastic. Yes it’s winter in Maine – you can feel it in the wind, hear it on the street and see it on the water.

"Moya" with her shrink-wrap frame. Note that A&M used their whisker pole instead of a 2x4 to be the backbone from the mast forward

We shrink-wrap Seabird every year, usually before Thanksgiving, so that we’re not fighting the holiday madness and trying to do boat work at the same time. The process can be a daunting task to a novice, but once you have a few under your belt it’s really quite simple. If you have a sailboat, the first thing I recommend doing is either taking all your lines down or moving them to fore and aft stays if possible.

Seabird's door frame, with the extra board to make a peak for shedding rain

The next step is to install at least three under-water lines that go under your keel or hull. These will hold the shrink-wrap down. Just tie these off anywhere to your life-lines. The next thing you can do is tie three or four loops that hang down about a foot from the top of your bullwhark — two on either side, one on the front, one in the back is plenty. You will thread another line through these loops to form your belly band. The ‘belly band’ is the real work-horse of the shrink wrap system. It is a line that goes all around the outside of your hull at the lower extent of your shrink-wrap.

Tacking the shrink-wrap around and under the belly-band

Now the tinkering really begins because you have to decide what type of frame you want to build. The sky is the limit as almost anything can be your shrink-wrap frame. The main principal here is that your boat slopes down from the center to the sides to allow snow and rain to shed off — and that’s really the only thing that’s common among all shrink-wrap. 1×4 hemlock boards are the cheapest wood you can use. I don’t recommend anything smaller, and we always use 2×4′s. You can screw as many as you need together to form a ridge that runs from stem to stern. Make sure you incorporate vertical pieces to hold the weight then use the same line you used for your belly band to tie it off left and right to hold it up so it won’t fall over. That would be a most basic frame, but a lot of boaters are pretty inginutive. Some use PVC tubing to support their shrink-wrap. I’ve also seen electrical conduit bent precicely to make a roof. These two types would be reusable as you can just strap them on every year.

The shrink wrap hanging loosely over the frame (some of the belly-band is already tacked together)

On Seabird, we like to have a solid frame made of 2x4s and a big door that we can get in and out of. To make this work, we lash a long 2×4 to the mast that extends all the way to our bow pulpit. The lumber is strong enough that it doesn’t need any vertical support, leaving our foredeck clean and open. The first thing I do is make a boom crutch to support our boom at the height I want it to be at. Our boom serves as a ridge pole all the way back to the transom where it meets our bimini frame to complete the backbone. To make our doorframe, we make a 6′ tall vertical frame that comes up from our deck and cross pieces that extend from that over to the top of the boom. To keep these pieces from sliding we screw a short piece of wood behind the boom and in front of the boom which locks the horizontal board in place. Poof, a door frame is born! Then we make a door that fits inside of the frame. We make a rectangular door with at least two cross-pieces so it keeps its shape. I never get too precise with my measurements, in fact, I don’t even use a pencil to mark the inches. I just get my saw in the vicinity of the length I want and just cut away. Just to make sure the rain and show sheds off of the area where the door frame is, i add another piece in the middle so it makes another peak.

Tightening down the plastic from the inside

I use 2 1/4″ drywall screws — so I know nothing’s moving… unlike that first time I did it… with strapping. I also like to go overkill on the lumber I use because the first year I did it I used 1×3 strapping and it imploded in a late-season storm. Then, grab the shrink-wrap rope and tie it from the top of your doorframe all the way forward to your pulpit, using moderate tension. Do the same thing on the back side, take the line from the pulpit and tie it back to the stern. Tension this line a lot as it will tighten the whole sytem and it will keep the shrink-wrap up off of your decks which will allow you to get forward without low-crawling.

Helpful to have a big crew helping you, or at least one person in the dinghy and one on the boat

If everything on deck is out of the way and stowed, you are now ready to start with the plastic. You’re going to want about 15′ to 20′ of plastic longer than your boat length, so for a 35′ boat you’re going to want about 50′. Having the extra footage allows you to make the door itself and to have a little extra — because holes happen. Mark the center of your shrink wrap with a black sharpie. This will allow you to put the center of the shrink wrap on the center of your boat. Now, you need to assemble some tools. You’ll need a knife, scissors, tape measure, a shrink-wrap gun and a friend. Measure the distance from the back of your mast to the front of your pulpit. Now, add a few feet and remember that number. Unroll your shrink wrap to the number of feet you remembered and slice it down the middle. Accuracy is not that important here, just make sure you have enough to go behind your mast and in front of your mast before you cut anything. A foot too long is better than a foot too short.

See how much head-room there is? Pardon the mess...

Now you and your friend need to roll up the sliced part next to the not-sliced part so you’ll have two rolls. Take your shrinkwrap tape and wrap it sticky side out around the mast, just above the boom. Now you have to take your shrink wrap and put the part you cut up against the back of the mast so that it sticks to the tape. Roll it forward and tack-weld or tape the two halves together along the entire ridge poll going forward. Once that’s done you go and you roll everything from the mast backwards, right off the back of the boat. Cut this down to length if needed. You’ll have to make another slice here for the back-stay, assuming your mast is staying up year round. Go onto the dock as this is the side you’ll work on first. Pull the shrink wrap tight towards that line you tied and guestimate at where it’s going to meet your standing rigging. Slice a horizontal line from the foreward shroud to the back one. Then slice down the middle on the outside of this cut so the shrinkwrap can come outside and around your shrouds. Tape it. Now start at one end and start tucking all of the shrink wrap under the belly band. Slice it vertically whenever there is an underwater line or a loop holding the belly band up. Only slice up to where the belly band is so that you can get everything around those lines. You want to work from the front of the boat to your first slice.

Holes blown in the wrap look like this, but no worries. Just tape them up so they don't leak!

This is where you’ll need your heat gun, a friend, and some welders gloves. Hold the shrink wrap gun in your bare hand and the welder’s glove on the other. The object here is to weld the plastic together, so your friend trims the wrap so that there’s about a foot left hanging down below the belly band. You grab that lower piece, hold it up a little, hit it with the heat gun for about 3 seconds, slap the plasic together, hit it with the gun for another two seconds, and tap tap tap, pat the shrink wrap together with your gloved hand. Note: The heat shrink gun is extremely hot and shoots a flame further than you think. When working with someone else, always have an escape route where your gun can point that is not the direction of their eyebrows or other hair. That way, if your gun is stuck open you always have a way you can point it without singeing your helper.

Having a dog-helper is good for general motivation as well... or sometimes not.

Continue working your way around your boat in this method. The bow and stern get a little funny because you have to wrap it like a christmas present and then heat it to weld it together. You can either hack a bunch of wrap out, or you can layer up the many pieces and weld them all together, it’s up to you. You’ll have to cut a little x for your docklines to go through and will have to cut the plastic for the opening of your door. Start in the top corner and cut diagonally down about a foot. Then cut down from the other top corner so you can fold back and weld the tabs to the rest of the shrink-wrap. Take the excess you cut off from the stern and use that to make your shrink-wrap door. For bonus points, put something inside the shrink wrap layers for everyone to see when they come knocking. I recommend that you weld the plastic together either on the inside of the door or on the outside of the door, not where the door meets the frame — as this is added bulk and may make the door hard to open and close.

Shrinking up the last of the wrinkles

In past years, we’ve used the “outhouse door locking mechanism,” where we would have a 6″ piece of threaded rod with two pieces of 2×4′s as “knobs” on each side. They would spin to lock the door in place, and we couldn’t lock each other out. This system will definitely not allow your door to open unless you want it to open, but can cause some headaches if the bolts and nuts get loose. Mostly, you’ll be outside spinning your board but the inside board won’t move. If this happens, a long screwdriver works well to go between the frame and the door to move the inside board. You should tighten the bolts so you don’t get locked out again! This happenned to us two or three times during the winter. This year, we haven’t bothered making a fancy latch and the door seems to stay closed. We bought cabinet hinges that want to “snap” closed, which helps, and the door fits really tight so it doesn’t want to swing open either. If we do get some serious wind, we’ll probably screw it shut for the night just for added security.

Bella is enjoying the sun, and lack of wind, out in our sun-room

Now that you have completed all your belly-banding and have cut the slits for your rigging on both sides, you’re now ready to shrink your bubble. It’s important to have a fire-dousing plan because the shrink-wrap can catch fire and spread although it’s very rare. You could also catch your wood on fire though that’s also rare. Stand on the dock and hit an area that you can easily reach with your heat gun. Hold it there til you see it change color and then spread that heat around until you see a big splotch change color. Don’t hit any one area for too long as it will cause holes but work your boat from one end to the other. If you notice it getting too hot, move to another area and start over. The goal is to have a drum-like sound when you rap on your shrink-wrap, but you’ll never quite make it perfect so once it’s tight with only a few wrinkles it’s best to leave well enough alone. If you keep trying and trying you may burn more holes and end up doing more harm than good. It’s good to practice on low areas first, that way if you burn a hole it won’t leak that much. Once you get the hang of the gun, you’re golden. Remember, you can always tape the holes.

Much cozier inside, too! The shrink-bubble keeps the drafts off so we can heat our boat easier all winter long

The shrink-wrap will pay for itself on the first bitterly cold, but sunny, day. Any time the sun is out it will feel like 100 degrees under your shrink wrap and it will be a great place to hang out during the day. Be safe, and enjoy!