Pic - the narrow end of the aft cabin - rotten wood :-(

The forward cabin is all finished and Colin did a fantastic job with his usual great attention to detail. The new water tanks are in and held securely in place on the new shelving. Having lined the sides of the hull with insulation and tongue and groove last winter, we've added more insulation under the bed base and at the end of the bed to reduce the cold spots. A new storage cupboard has been made to make the most of the space between the tanks to replace the drawers we had to take out to put the tanks in.

We had a chance to see how well the insulation worked when we had snow a few weeks ago. It stayed cosy and warm in there so now it's time to do the same in the back cabin, where we sleep.

We moved to sleeping in the forepeak and began the job of taking apart the back bed. We were a little horrified by how bad things had got in there and cross with ourselves for not having done anything sooner (although we were doing lots of other jobs too!). Most of the bed base was rotten, so Colin has replaced the worst of it which will be painted to hopefully help protect it better. We'll need new foam and a cover for the mattress as what was there is mouldlyunderneath and the old cover has disintegrated.

Under the bed mattress we use a wirey fabric similar to this: HyperVent to create an air space between the mattress and the cold bed base. On top of this we have some wooden Ikea bed slats that are curved and lift the mattress off the HyperVent creating an additional space for air to circulate. Our old bed mattress does fit quite snugly into the surrounding woodwork so I'm thinking of getting the new foam cut slightly smaller to allow an air gap around the edges.

A design 'feature' of our boat is that at the narrow end of the bed, where the hull curves up at the stern, bare hull is actually touching onto the mattress. The hull is very cold (we live in the UK - perhaps the boat is telling us something - go somewhere warm) and our heat against the cold leads to rivers of condensation forming in that area. This has resulted in rotten wood along the sides of the bed which Colin is in the process of ripping out and replacing. We'll line the inside of the hull with underfloor insulation sheeting (this is what we've used elsewhere on the boat) and also the underside of the bed base.

The insulation we use is this and so far has worked well where we've used it to line the spaces between the hull and the back of cupboards and shelves in the saloon. Condensation will still form against the hull but it should now run straight down into the bilges rather than soaking into all the woodwork as it was before. The insulation is not affected by moisture so should last plenty of years and keep the boat cool once we get somewhere hot.


Pic: Emerald in the snow a couple of weeks ago