Let me tell you my curtain story. Lots of time and money. We bought a 35-II from some friends at our marina and although they had pored tons of money into the boat on performance items (new sails, rigging etc.) they were not too interested in the creature comforts and the curtains were the originals from 1972. You can imagine that they were ugly and sun burned so bad that looking at them hard could make a piece fall off.
So one of the first things the wife wanted replaced were the curtains. The original curtain hangers where these little channels with tiny, tiny screws holding them to the fiberglass. Little buttons were sewn onto the curtains that slid in the channels. There was no way either of us was going to sit around and sew in a bunch of buttons into new curtains so we needed a new system. Bring out the W.M. catalog and let’s spend some money.
Well, they sell this “Snap track system”. You buy long pieces of track and separate guides (carriers) that snap over the track and attach to the curtains allowing you to slide them open and shut. When you add in the curtains we bought (since discontinued) we had over $200.00 into this project.
Everything comes via UPS and so it’s out to the boat to put up the new curtains. Wait a minute, how do I put up this track? It has screw holes in it so they must mean for you to screw it to the wall right? Do you have any idea how thin your cabin wall is above the windows? I can tell you, it’s thin. Don’t ask me how I know and please pretend you don’t notice that dab of silicon on the outside above the windows.
This obviously calls for some advanced engineering. I go to Home Depot and buy a length of wood molding 1” wide and about a half inch thick. Cut a piece long enough for the windows and then cut a bunch of little blocks about two inches long. I glue these blocks to the back of the long rail and spray paint everything white. The plan is I will use some 3M 5200 and glue the little blocks to the wall, and then I can screw the tracks to the wood. Hang the curtains, kick back and have a beer. I used a hot glue gun to hold the blocks while the 5200 set up and everything went according to plan.
Later that day I was modestly boasting about my brilliantly concocted solution to the devilishly complicated task of hanging new curtains to one of my sailing buddies when his brother in law (who of course didn’t even own a boat) turned to me and inquired as to why I had not just used two sided foam tape to stick the track to the bulkhead. Duh, dope slap up along side the head. A year later when my glued on wooden rail fell off, that’s just what I did.