Interior cushions & mattresses

I took my wife on her first boat inspection this morning. A very nice (to me) 2001 310.

It was important to take her, as her sense of smell is ultra-sensitive and mine is literally non-existent. As soon as she went below, she commented on a 'mildewy' smell from the aft berth area. She's not familiar with what 'normal' is on a boat.

If I go forward with this boat, it's likely renovations will be in order for the mattress and the berth cushions. Apart from the smell she gets weirded out by using someone else's bedding. I tried to explain that she doesn't have a problem in hotels, but you know how that argument goes.

Anyway, have any of you cleaned or replaced the mattress? If so, how cleaned, or where sourced new, and what were your experiences? The aft-berth foam will be easy to come by but, as always it's the covers that are difficult. With the vinyl bottoms, will the covers launder normally? Anyone on the left coast have good experiences with someone doing covers?

Any help is good help, thanks!

Richard

 

Good luck on the boat search. I hope you end up with a beautiful 310. But I am a little biased. We love ours and are closing in on 10,000 nautical miles on her. And she just with stood over 170 knot winds with a direct impact from a category 5 hurricane.

On the rear berth, we ditched the cushions to make more space for storage. A queen air mattress will fit almost perfectly in the area, it's just a little short. So if your plan for that berth is the occasional guest this approach works well.

On the forward berth, we got some quotes for a new mattress. They ranged from $2000-4500. We have run into a number of boaters who have cut their own tempurpedic style mattress to fit. We might go with that approach in the near future.

Good luck,

Jesse

 

The air mattress is a good idea! I'm calling tomorrow on a custom cut foam mattress for the forward berth...

 

Good Luck on your search, as with Jesse, we are biased also, the 310 is a GREAT boat!

 

Richard, Just to give you something to think about.
I am replacing all the foam on Dragonfly with closed cell foam, which I will order in uncut. I am making my pads myself. The plan is to use two layers of 3/4" foam glued into a pocket shape and fill the middle with an air pad. I want all my foam to have buoyancy and not ever get water logged. Closed foam tends to be too firm so I want the middle to be hollow. I can fill it with an air mattress to my desired firmness. The layer of foam should protect the air mattress from wear or puncturing. A friend who sews is making all the covers.
- Will (Dragonfly)

 

There are lots of canvas shops out there that do that. Just had all the cushions and the aft berth done on an E-28+.
including new foam for $3800 Cdn. V-berth a couple of years ago 6 in. foam and cover was $1200

 

I recently removed the vee berth mattress covers, washed them thoroughly inside (the inside of the vinyl bottoms were particularly funky) and out.. bought new foam from The Foam Factory http://www.thefoamfactory.com/seatcushion/seatcushion.html
and put the cleaned covers back onto the new foam.. 4" thick for vee berth was about $350 .
I tried washing the old foam but could not get the boat/diesel funk out of it.. They were 1985 vintage.

 

If you are handy at sewing you can get all of the supplies at https://www.sailrite.com/. They also have instructional videos for lots of projects. Sue has sewn all of the canvas on our C30 including the spinnaker in my avatar.

 

I've been admiring that spinnaker since I joined this forum. Looks beautiful.

 

I don't know how it works for mildew, but we were able to completely remove really bad diesel stink with Febreze.

I had an injector failure on my Artic diesel furnace that sprayed atomized diesel into the blower air. It coated everything inside the boat with a fine diesel mist and everything stunk to high heaven.

I removed all fabric from the boat and used a pressure washer with a mild degreaser on all interior surfaces. I started at the ceiling and worked my way to the bilge. When I was done I still had a mild diesel smell, so I diluted some Febreze into a two-gallon sprayer and wetted down all surfaces and the smell was gone.

We were planning to replace all the cushions but when we calculated the cost decided to try saving them. We removed the covers and washed them and was able to get rid of the diesel smell.

Foam is hard to wash and harder to dry and they were in good shape, so we opted to not wash them. I put each bare foam cushion into a heavy-duty plastic trash bag and taped a short section of extension wand into the opening. I used my shop vacuum to suck all the air out of them that I could. Then I pulled the hose off the extension and sprayed Febreze into the wand as the foam inflated. That pulled the Febreze deep into the voids of the foam.

Diesel smell completely gone and it has never come back. Febreze has very little scent and it goes away quickly but really works on removing diesel stink.

 

Have never sewn a thing in my life, others than rips or buttons, but have read a lot of threads/blogs by people who have, so I'm intrigued. The Stingy Sailor (a blog) did his on a home sewing machine. I always figured you had to pay the big bucks for a commercial model.

 

The Sailrite LSZ-1 sell for $800 or $950 with case and can be used to make anything from winch covers to sails.

 

Thanks. Sue made the Star of Papillon using a standard Sailrite asymmetrical cruising spinnaker sail kit which I had them build to the max size to be an LRFD code 4. We then bought extra fabric in red and yellow and modified the sail to add in the cross arms. All of the vertical seams except for the center one are tape only. After racing and cruising with it for the past 8 years and its shape is still perfect.

 

Just an FYI, on a custom foam mattress for the forward berth, based on widths of 24" (top), 60" (center, sort of) and 48" (bottom), with a length of 76". This is their most expensive foam, which may be too firm for a mattress.

A rough estimate, assuming you do go with the Lux High Quality at 8” thick, would be as follows:
· 1 Custom Cut – Lux HQ – 8” x 62” x 76” = $408.37
Cut to Customer Template
· Labor to Shape Foam = $49.00
· Custom Order Setup Fee = $12.99
Shipping = Free (within contiguous US)
Order subtotal = $470.36 USD

That's just the foam. You'd probably have to glue down some batting on the top and edges, then maybe put the entire thing in a mattress bag/cover prior to the fitted sheet.

 

Anyone have one of those 'Purple' mattresses that are all over internet ad space right now? I wonder if they can be cut?

 

To those with 310s; do your aft cushions have a fabric 'hinge' in them (I assume to make it easier to get them out) and do they have vinyl bottoms? Is the vinyl necessary? Presumably it's to prevent the bottom from getting wet. Why, then, is there nothing similar for the fore berth (bare mattress). Just easier to keep dry?

 

We did the foam in a bag with Febreze also with a modification. Sprayed all sides of the foam heavily with Febreze then sucked the air out of the bag so the Febreze would be sucked into the foam. If you have a heavy roller or you walk on the foam during the suction process you can get most of the nasty air out of them. The covers came out of the washing machine smelling like new. Lee will be making new covers with our Sailrite machine later this year with about $300 of fabric. We are going to cut down a foam mattress (mattress in a box) for the aft stateroom in our S2 8.0C. You can find some good fabric deals at DIY Upholstery online.

 

mine have a hinge, but no vinyl bottoms.

 

Washing foam is pretty easy IF you can get the thing in the washer. Soak it down and use some bleach, let it sit for a while then rinse. If you can get the whole thing in in the washer you can "spin dry" to get it damp dry. Folding it over works.
Making new covers is pretty easy. Did my entire boat (salon, stateroom bedding....) in sumbrella for less than $200. The Hunter solution was to have a few very large cushions which made moving /storing them in any place but their designed position really difficult. We broke them into many more individual cushions and are much happier with the set up.

 

Same here...