Helm seats: upholstering the helm station
Of all the seats on a boat, the helm seat works hardest: it is where the passage is spent, it takes the full sun and it absorbs every slam off a wave. It is also the first thing you see on stepping up to the helm. This is what is worth deciding when it is reupholstered: its form, its material, its colour and what lies underneath.
By Royal Stitch · Published
Illustrative imageThe seat that works hardest
It is where the passage is spent, often standing. That is why many helm seats have a flip-up bolster at the front: down, it is an ordinary seat; up, it lets you helm standing with something to lean on. Pompanette, an American maker of helm seating, offers its series with or without that bolster, and describes it on another model in its range as padded, upholstered and fitted with reinforced hinges.
The bolster is folded up and down on every outing. When the seat is reupholstered, its filling and hinges are worth checking on their own.
Flip-up bolster
Up, you helm standing, with support.
Light shade
Gets less hot in the sun.
Dark shade
Burns more to sit on at the height of summer.
Vinyl or technical leather
Pompanette supplies its seats in white vinyl as standard, with leather and custom upholstery as options. Another model in its range comes in marine vinyl, with an upgrade to an outdoor technical leather.
Polyurethane technical leathers are a broad family, and not all of them belong on a boat. Ultrafabrics, the maker of Ultraleather, presents its Pumice line for marine seating, with anti-mildew treatment and colourfastness to sunlight, seawater and chlorine — and warns that another of its outdoor lines, Summit, is not suitable for marine exterior use. That detail is on each fabric’s spec sheet, and it is the first thing to check.
Colour and the sun
In a test by the Spanish motoring club RACC with its Swiss counterpart TCS, a black car body in the sun got considerably hotter than a white one. A helm seat is no different: a dark shade, however handsome, burns more to sit on at the height of summer.
That is no reason to rule it out, but it is a reason to decide knowing how much sun the helm gets and whether the boat has a bimini or hardtop.
Suspension seats
Fast boats can have suspension helm seats, such as those by Ullman Dynamics or Shockwave, designed to cushion the slam off a wave. Shockwave warns in its manual that its seats mitigate the effects of shock and vibration but do not remove the risk of injury.
When a seat like that is reupholstered, the upholstery is redone without touching the mechanism: the suspension is a matter for its maker.
What to ask before it is reupholstered
These questions make the job clear before it starts:
- Form
- Does it have a flip-up bolster? Are its filling and hinges checked?
- Material
- Marine vinyl or technical leather? Does its maker rate it for marine exterior use?
- Colour
- How much sun does the helm get? Is there a bimini or hardtop over it?
- Underneath
- Is it a suspension seat? What comes apart, and what doesn’t?
The service
A helm station due new upholstery?
Interiors, deck cushions and helm seating in marine-grade materials. The service page explains how the work is done.
Sources
Each seat and each fabric comes from its maker; the heat, from RACC. Each source was found by searching the publisher’s own site.
- Pompanette — Signature series helm seats
- Pompanette — Triton helm chair
- Ultrafabrics — Pumice, for marine seating
- Ultrafabrics — Summit, not for marine exterior use
- RACC — the effect of sunshine on a car’s interior temperature (PDF, in Spanish)
- Ullman Dynamics — suspension seats
- Shockwave — suspension seat operating manual (PDF)