posted 08-10-2000 01:00 AM ET (US)        

What is the usual practice for towing and canvas? Do you tow with your mooring cover in place or not?

My thinking is this: If I just paid $700 for a nice mooring cover, I take it off before going down the highway at 70 MPH for 800 miles.

What does everyone else do?

posted 08-10-2000 05:24 PM ET (US)            

Strictly speaking what I have is not a mooring cover; its a sunbrella towing cover from West Marine that is made for the Outrage 18 and its a really good fit. It has straps that go under the hull and could only be put on when the boat is on the trailer.
It also has a drawstring cord that cinches the cover tight under the gunwale.

The only problem I have had is on the trip back from the North Channel when the drawstring cord broke and I had to fish it back out thru the hem - a real pain on the side of the interstate.

I usually cruise at 60, but 70 is no problem with the Expedition. BTY, I probably would NOT tow with a Mills mooring cover on. With the Revenge, you will have plenty of dry storage space anyway.

posted 08-10-2000 09:05 PM ET (US)         

My 5.7 litre Caddy, with 3.70 posi-traction rear end and 7000lb factory tow package, tows the 25 Outrage (about 6000 lbs of total rig) at 65 fairly easily, and on cruise control, as long as I'm happy with 6mpg. A properly set-up and balanced trailer is essential for this, as are good brakes, on a rig this size. A really steep hill brings it down to 45 in second gear! Regular grades slow me down to about 55.

posted 08-20-2000 09:48 PM ET (US)            

I've always towed my boats with the mooring/trailering cover on, either Mills or custom. The current 21' has a custom cover, as the Mill's cover would not fit over the raised console/windshield. Was made down in Mount Clemens at Dockside Canvas. Since John knew that I wanted to tow with it, he added heavier seams and hardware for it. Works great. Towed it up to N/C twice, up to northern MI once. Since it has a slightly lower profile than my old 225 Revenge, I've found I'm getting 13.5mpg up to Manatoulin.

posted 08-22-2000 10:10 PM ET (US)            

I am still using the mooring cover I got with the boat in '92. When travelling I use a relatively inexpensive cover I got through Overton's. (I used a call-in number and the cover was designed for my boat. Has straps I attach to the trailer frame. Mostly interested in keeping the curious from going through the boat, particularly if overnight stops are part of the schedule.

For short trips to near-by lakes I don't use a cover.

posted 08-23-2000 09:03 PM ET (US)            

I bungeed the cover down like a trussed turkey, and I did some customizing as well, to eliminate as many entry points for air and flapping pieces as I could. The Mills cover, where it divided to go around each bow-rail stanchion, was re-inforced at the factory, but I found that at highway speeds (or at least at *my* highway speeds)the gap that was left in the canvas between the stanchions and the draw-rope snaps under the rubrail would funnel air under the cover in a bothersome way, so I had my local tent and awning shop sew a heavy vinyl flap to both sides if the gap in the canvas outboard the stanchions. Both flaps went from the stanchion to the draw rope, and each were the full width of the gap so they'd overlap each other full width, and I had the shop sew heavy duty velcro to the bottom of each forward flap and to the top of each rear flap so I could velcro them together, as if the stanchions "grew" right up through the canvas. the only other thing I did was remove the arch-shaped piece of canvas right in front of the motor that was designed to dump water into the motor well, and replace it with heavy vinyl also, with a couple of grommets at the back edges so I could bungee it tight to keep it from flapping. Impossible to stop it from flapping completely, but the heavy vinyl doesn't fray. I can tell you that it held up and served it's purpose well under consistent upper end highway speeds and an occasional foray into ludicrous speed.

My 22' came with a Sundura cover (CDC, or something like that, made up in your neck of the woods, available for many whalers in Boat US and other catalogs) that goes *over* the bow rails. I've used it the same way to cover all the stuff we seem to think we need on vacation, trussed it down, and it has worked fine that way on a round trip to Key West, a couple of round trips to Cincinnati, many trips to Lake Michigan, a round trip to Huron, Ohio, and 1-3/4 round trips to the North Channel. I raised my console 4-1/2 inches after all the trips I just mentioned except the last one (NC 200 Rendezvous), and all I had gotten around to doing with the cover to accomodate the extra height it had to deal with was to have an extra piece of material sewn in as reinforcement where the cover went over the console; the cover is/was in it's 8th year and I was hesitant to put much more into it. It just kind of got stretched a little tighter, and rode up a little higher at the bottom hem near the middle of the boat. Well, sir - on the way home from the North Channel trip ( somewhere around Clare, I think) my routine glances in the mirror to see what things were looking like back there started to indicate that something weird was up with the cover amidships. I pulled over and walked back to find that the cover was in two completely disparate pieces, held together only by the perimeter draw-rope. It had ripped right on the new seam where I had had the reinforcement sewn in over the console, from one side to the other. Towed the rest of the way home with the cover off, and (I don't think it was my imagination) felt that the boat had a *lot* less wind resistance and drag with the cover off. I have ordered a new cover, like the old one, because as strange as it seems, Leslie at Mills claims there isn't a Mills cover made for the Outrage 22'.

Oh, well...I'll probably continue to travel covered most of the time, but am fooling around with my Mills console cover to see if I can make it highway speed proof, in the event that I want to keep the bugs off the console if I do any uncovered trailering; I am chalking up the rip to a cover that had really served it's duty and had just one too many things asked of it with the raised console.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.