Many think that it may have something to do with ship handling, miles cruised, storms weathered, or even the kind of boat one chooses or how well it is maintained.  I am here to say that it is none of these.

        The sign of the art form is...... how one covers one's boat at the end of the season.  Where you can sail forth and accidentally do something wrong like, heaven forbid, have a fender slip over the side or do something else tremendously stupid, generally nobody will notice unless your stupidity involves your flare gun.  While sailing, the chances are even more remote that if somebody does see you, that they will know who you are.  When you lay your boat up for the season, in most places, you are literally "eye to eye" with your fellow marina mates and your every move is scrutinized by SOMEBODY.  Like snowflakes, no two boat covers are the same.  Where the cover material that one uses is important, the architectural structure beneath the cover can rival the human skeleton for complexity in both form and function.

        Not only must the cover pass casual inspections during it's construction and assembly, but also must endure rain, sleet, snow, wind, the occasional "Nor'easter and for people on the "other" coast, whatever El Nino happens to be serving up this week.  You might as well turn in your blazer if you get the dreaded call from the marina "Mr. Jones, you boat cover has blown off and is currently blocking three lanes of I-95....".  We are talking serious here.

        First thing, people with cradles are not part of the competition.  Sorry, but to be truly in the running one must have poppits to contend with.  Before laying up for our first season we were warned by numerous people not to tie our cover to the poppit stands.  The logic behind this is that the cover may blow off, act like a sail and pull out your stands, dumping your boat.  This may be arrogant of me but is this like the kid getting his tongue stuck to the flagpole in the dead of winter?  Everyone has heard about it but nobody has seen it?  (I'll take heat over that comment!)

        The hands down winner for function, but dead last for style, are the people that have their boats "shrink-wrapped".   Stopping all but a meteorite, this preservation method is a science rather than an "art form".  The "condom" look may be trendy, but it is not art.
 
        Like the sculpture that has a material that they prefer, the boat cover creator has structural materials they prefer.  The three most popular by my observation are wood, metal pipe, and PVC pipe.

Where the metal pipe or electrical conduit seems to be somewhat cheap and easy, using pipe appears to be quite complex when it comes to taking it apart and trying to re-use it the following season.

I have only seen the PVC pipe rig used once.  The only reason that I knew it was PVC was because the cover had blown off and like a dinosaur skeleton it appeared to be walking off of the boat.  It seemed like a tremendous environmental waste as there was enough pipe there to re-plumb five medium sized houses.

The use of wood, from my observations, is the most popular.  Whether it be 700 linear feet of firring strips to plywood gusseted frames that mimic the actual boat curvature (the final product looks much like a walnut) wood is king.

One of the most clever uses of wood I have seen was the taking of "saw horse" brackets and fitting them with 8 to 12 foot 2x4's that made what looked like wooden swingset frames.  These were place periodically on the boat to create a structure that had to be 20 feet tall.  This gargantuan form was covered with the largest blue tarp I have ever seen.  All this was tied to damn near everything.  It was grand!!!!  People were eyeing it up as a possible ski slope after the first snow.  Unfortunately, the laws of gravity and physics, combined with wind and rain, destroyed this before it could be photographed or even sketched.  Lost to the ages.

We have not distinguished ourselves notably enough to warrant a paragraph about our boat covering.  Just one thing, if you can manage to park your car next to your covered boat, remember that when you dump water or ice from your cover.