Re: where and what carpet to buy?
I have the sad fortune of being married to an commercial structure interior designer of some renown. I have been regaled with the discrption of every fiber new and old, of all the backings ancient and up to date, the wear charactoristics, ect,., ad nauseum for decades. Her is my take: buy genuine marine carpet, screw it down only on the edges after it has had a chance to lay out in the sun and stretch and motor on as best you can.
I think Tashasdaddy has it all wrong as to putting carpet in your boat. Personally I like the warm soft feeling underfoot when I come barefoot off of a sandy beach. The carpet scrubs the sand from my toesies and helps relieve the itch of my atheletes foot. It also makes a good surface to land my fish as they do not flop so much fighting against the pile of the carpet. I have a bad sense of smell so the blood, scales and fish guts in the backing is of no concern to me. I wash the carpet out weekly in my fish and ski, yet my friends seem to be loosing interest in going out in the boat, go figure! Some people are more than finnickey.
They do seem to line up to take voyages on my steam launch with wooden floors (creaky, hard and dull) and my fiberglass decked sailboat (cold, hard and gritty with it's non slip surface). There is no accounting for taste!
A little bit of bleach, daily vacuuming, and drying is the easy answer to the objections to carpet on a boat.
