Over the decades, we’ve stored quite a few boats outdoors with only fabric covers to protect them. Those covers must be supported in some way to prevent sagging lest they create holding ponds for rainwater that will likely end up leaking into the boats. For boats with sailing rigs, we’ve used sprits as ridgepoles, but an elegant solution for boats with or without spars is to spring battens across the beam to arch the cover. The battens are easy enough to make; the challenge is how to securely anchor the ends of the battens on the gunwales. East Passage Boatwrights in Bristol, Rhode Island, has an innovative and beautiful solution: a batten socket that fits into a rowboat’s standard 1⁄2″ oarlock fitting, is easy to use, and doesn’t disrupt a small boat’s classic lines. Keeper lines, threaded through a hole in the bottom of the socket's pin, can be tied off to the boat or, as seen here, back around the batten itself.
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These are pretty nice, solves the problem well. For winter storage where I need to deal with snow, I use 1/2 ID PVC to create Conestoga wagon hoops with a 1/2″ dowel or rod driven into the end. Works great but I’d not want to take it down the road.
For dry storage of my SF Pelican, I made the hoops out of PVC pipe with T fittings at each end. I modified the T fittings by sawing away a portion of the cross piece (as opposed to the vertical leg) so that they would fit snugly down over the the cockpit coaming. I used about 4 of these, as I recall. They seem to hold up well during winter weather. They certainly are low cost. Should be adaptable to any boat with a coaming that protrudes above the deck by an inch or so.