Sprucing up the old girl
30 March 2008 | Bequia
Clear & 80 degrees
Upgrading the living room. On a sailboat your living room is called the cockpit. Here you sip coffee watching the sun rise and later you eat dinner, listening to the sounds of the conch being blown signaling the setting of the sun. When you are offshore traveling between tropical destinations the cockpit is the center of activity. Here all watches are taken, books are read, navigation discussed as well as all great stories told. In short the cockpit is a place of adventure.
When we first bought the Omarsea she had several small folding cushions and a Bimini top. While this was fine for the weekly charter trade it was not going to work long term for a family of five. The first order of business was to make the cockpit better protected from the elements. Few people realize how cold it gets in the tropics offshore with a good wind blowing. Salt spray soon covers everything when going to weather. So it is imperative that a spray shield or as we Americans call them a dodger be employed to keep the occupants of the cockpit warm and dry.
Dodgers come in two forms. The classic is a self standing windshield that may be folded down in good conditions. More popular today is what is commonly referred to as a California dodger. This is a windshield that is integrated into the Bimini with lots of windows for good visibility.
When Jean and I looked at buying our boat we knew it needed a dodger. We chose to build our own as we considered it a project that we could work on over several weeks and come up with a reasonable product . The end result was a really good quality dodger with many features that we would not have had by having the dodger built by a shop in the states. However it should be noted that if you and your spouse have any difficulty working together that you will want to forgo the extra features and have the dodger made to save your marriage. *Note the large zippers that allow great airflow to the 2 aft cabins when open.
We were very fortunate in that Jean being infinitely smarter than myself chose to enlist the help of Chris @ Bequia canvas. Chris was able to give us the confidence to get over the initial fears of such a big project and she sewed the really tricky stuff for us.
I will say that though the sewing machine remains a mystery to this engineer I did manage to learn enough to be a big help in our next cockpit project -cushions.