Ibuprofen = "sailing berries"
Mo, nice set up. I still have a 3-pole awning which uses the main halyard and goes all the way between the backstay and shrouds. You still have to crawl around the bimini & the awning works better for long periods at anchor/in port. But, like you, can't sail with the awning.
As you can see, my boom crowds the bimini a bit. I actually bought that bimini on the Internet from a pontoon boat joint. They sell it in 6" increments, so I bought it a little tall, and cut the frame down as far as I could and still stand under it. I may still raise the boom, just a few inches, to decrease the encroachment, but the boom is on a track on the mast, and I'd have to move the track up too...that means yanking 15 stainless screws out of aluminum (probably corroded) and re-tapping a few holes farther up. The boom just clears the bimini when it is up, so moving the boom is a low return/high complexity project. Getting my stbd bulkhead completed and the mast re-tuned by spring (currently holding up the rig with genoa halyard) is the current task & slightly higher on the priority list.
