Your canvas and upholstery, done right
Your canvas is a small building on a pitching deck, in a rainy corner of the country. It has to shed water, hold its shape in a gust, open and close without a fight, and look right from the helm, from your tender, and from the dock. That is the standard we build to, whether the job is a full enclosure or a single cockpit cushion.
Every piece starts as a design conversation with you. Before anything is cut, we work out how it will be used: where a crew member’s hand lands when the boat heels or a wake hits, where water runs and where it pools, how you move about the deck. Then we pattern aboard, on the frames and fittings the piece will work with, so it fits your boat and no other.
We build for Pacific Northwest weather: long summer sun, months of winter rain, and November gales. The cloth, the thread and the hardware are chosen for where your boat goes, whether that’s Alaska, Puget Sound or Baja, and we finish the details so they stay finished.
How the work goes
It starts with a conversation. Call or email, tell us about your boat and what you want the canvas or upholstery to do, and we’ll arrange a visit, aboard your boat or at the loft. That visit is where the design work begins.
Then we design, and only then pattern, aboard your boat. We build in our loft at Stimson Marina, in Ballard, Seattle’s historic maritime neighborhood. When the piece is ready, we fit it aboard. It’s finished when it fits, and not before.
We work on sail and power boats, and on projects ashore now and then. We’ll tell you honestly what we can do, when we can do it, and what it will take.
What our clients say
Read what our clients say about Lighthouse Marine Canvas, LLC.
Tell us about your boat
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About Michael
Michael has been designing and building things since he was a small boy, and at eight he found sailing, or perhaps sailing found him. He taught it for fifteen seasons with the American Sailing Association and US Sailing, and has helmed many sailing and motor boats, from a seven-foot Optimist to a 54-foot cruising yacht. Some of his fondest memories are of students finding their own joy in it: the moment heeling stops being a worry and the adventure takes over.
He spent years engineering systems that had to work every day for a great many people, and that is where the habit of designing before building was made. Elegant things that work are not an accident. They come from thinking the whole job through first, choosing materials with care, and sweating the fine details.
He owns and maintains a classic plastic 1981 Panda 40, a Bob Perry cutter, and has spent enough seasons aboard to know where canvas succeeds and where it quietly fails. He knows what it is to pay for this work and to live with it afterward.
Lighthouse Marine Canvas is where all of that splices together.
Background chart: NOAA's Historical Map & Chart Collection