You did have the snow struts?Had the cover for 4 winters and this year, although not a ton of snow, 3 out of the 6 pairs of frame legs collapsed under the weight of snow. Frustrating because the guy next to me has a one and his held up.
No they are additional braces for heavy snow load areas... If you are not busting snow off a Fairclough after each storm then you really better have the snow struts... Even then these covers need to have the snow removed so the don't collapse..MS, what do you mean by snow struts? The 1x2 longitudinal fir strips?
There should be two rows of them. I had an installer use only one row a couple of years back and made them do it over.
They are an option..I follow the video on how to install and instructions booklet that came with kit. My boat is in MA and when I bought the cover that is where the boat was located and cover delivered. If I needed a snow strut, they should have advised.
Up here I hardly see a Fairclough covered boat without them. Still even with the struts the covers are not intended to have snow sit on them... If you can't get to the boat to bust snow off them, then a shrink cover is often a better fit because, when well designed, snow simply won't stay on them..Interesting. I've never heard of them, nor did the sales folks at Fairclough ever mention them.
I would not be without the snow struts in the North East... They can buy you time between snow storms and really help stiffen up the cover... Hell over the last three weeks we've had about 3' of the white stuff fall here... Tough to keep up with when it gets like this.I just received my new Faircough cover this winter. I mentioned to them that I planned to move to Maine and that I wanted to be sure the cover would be OK for a Maine winter. They didn't mention snow struts and they assured me it would be fine. They did say that I MUST knock the snow off after a big dump because while it might be OK after one dump, it can't necessarily handle multiple big snow dumps.
I think my cover is higher in the middle that the one in Maine Sail's picture. Perhaps the increased pitch means I don't need braces.
Our homemade conduit supports also gave way because of the snowload. Bent like pretzels. Rain absorbed by the snow was simply too heavy. We're re-engineering our supprt system this weekend. (It's a lot warmer!)