6/5/2010 - Stowage

I'm feeling less and less bad about sinking the boat. Wait, we didn't actually sink the boat, just sunk it down about 4" below it's designed waterline depth. I got to thinking about it this evening while I was talking to my friend Dave on the phone. When we first sailed Siempre Sabado down the coast to Newport, she was riding just as designed. there was maybe an inch or two of bottom paint visible above the surface of the water. Now, less than an inch of boot stripe is visible. But back then, she was pretty bare bones. Oh sure, she had everything she needed to make the trip but she certainly wasn't outfitted with any of the niceties of cruising: watermaker, Honda generator, large battery bank, tools, tools, more tools, an oven, outboard motor, propane bottles, SSB radio, books, paint, varnish, spare parts, roller furlers, ukuleles, computers, refrigeration, spare anchors, chain anchor rode, solar panels, life raft, etc, etc, etc. So, after adding all that stuff and more, as well as stores, if we're only down 4" or so, I just don't feel too bad.

The big question is "where does it all go?". I confess, I've asked this many times. Actually the way I usually put it is "where the hell do you think we're going to put that?". This came up most recently following our trip to the valley for last minute stuff. Granted there are still a few things that haven't actually been stowed but I know where most of it's going to go. But, we brought all this stuff down to an already full boat and dumped it in the middle of the cabin. Then I excused myself and left the heavy work to Lulu. I'll be damned if, when I returned, she hadn't found homes for almost everything. And then today when we knew we'd have some family members wanting to see the boat, she managed to stow things even further. I don't necessarily know where anything is but hopefully she does.

Here are a few photos to give you an idea of how things are stowed on board.

The bookcases are making me think more and more seriously about e-readers.

We keep a fair amount of stuff stowed in hammocks above our the foot end of the bed, in the bookshelves outboard of the hammocks and along the hull, which cuts in to the width of the foot of the bed a bit so this stuff has to be thin (pillows, kick boards, etc.):

The thing in the upper left corner of the photo is the end of my ukulele case suspended from the overhead:

Lots of small-stuff bins, more books, notebooks and another ukulele, all on top of or above the clothes locker:

And the piece de resistance, the quarter berth. This is behind the navigation station, running along the aft quarter of the port side of the hull and is actually supposed to be a place to sleep. But we cut out the mattress to gain storage room and store all the stuff that we can't figure out where else to put. We refer to this area as "the garage". It drives me a little bit crazy but I just don't see any alternative.

The problem with a small boat is that all of the stuff that is pretty common to cruising vessels now: solar panels, watermakers, SSB radios, etc. weigh essentially the same whether you're on a large boat or a small boat. But a load of say, 2000 lbs. is 15% of our design displacement whereas it's less than 10% of the design displacement of a Westsail 32. But, somehow it's all aboard and stowed. I don't think we have any real significant weight yet to add. In other words, I'm pretty sure we're about as heavy and low in the water as we're going to get. I certainly hope so anyway.