I've never been aboard a 26 but my 23.5 has a similar snap hood system. I snap all the snaps on before raising the hinged hatch cover. There is enough play in the struts so that after the hinged cover is partly lifted, the strut ends can be slightly rotated inboard into the hatch opening, that is, out of the channel on the hatch coaming. The hatch cover is then lifted up as far as you can and the strut ends are returned into the channels and placed against the stops at the after end of the coaming channels. If you do it this way you'll find you're minimizing the fight to get the all the snaps connected because the canvas cover is not tensioned until everything else is in place. Also your canvas cover is nice and taut and you've got standing head room.
A dab of lubricant on each on the snaps makes their operation, well...a snap.
EZPZ.
Kind regards
Hugh