Bahrain-based Gulf Shade – a leading manufacturer of tensile fabric structures – was recently involved in the fabrication and installation of an innovative traditional boat made of fabric for a project in Manama.

The project – which was one-of-a-kind for the company – envisaged the design and building of a boat structure with a 6-m-long hull and a 10-m-high mast.
“The first step was to get the shape of the boat hull to match that of the traditional Bahraini boat,” says a spokesman for the company. “This was done by taking digital photos of boats anchored on the shores of Manama. Ratios of width and height and measurements of curvatures of the boat hull were drawn up from the images. The design specialist team then redrew these measurements with AutoCad. Once the shape was complete, studio max program was used to give the boat its authentic traditional looks.”
“From a fabrication point of view, the biggest hurdle was the forming of the steel masts,” says the spokesman. “It took a lot of ingenuity on the part of the design team, which needed to bend steel for the support of the sail as well as get the right radius of curvature to match that of the fabric.”