Wow! Lookit that stepped ogee on yer cockpit brace. Looks like a regular piece of furniture. Seriously, it's amazing how that piece of 3/4" jigsaw made the cockpit deck so much stiffer.

When I started this project on 338 I was an inch taller. My DNA is already mutating, I'm sure, so that when launching day comes I'll be 4'6" - perfect for an Ariel, both below and on deck. Actually I'm convinced that being fitted with telescoping prosthesis, like twist and lock boathooks, would better serve the human stowage problem.

Thanks Capt. Mike. Starboard side quarter berth seems natural. Why the kitchen has to be port side, I read once, had to do with an Englishman's lunch being always prepared on the starboard tack. Is this true? Tradition!

The 25D must have wider buttocks than the Ariel. Yesterday I marked in a line on the hull interior under the stbd locker two inches higher than the berth in the cabin. This 'waterline' reaches only about 3/5s of the way aft towards the rising stern. A foam matress will raise it and increase that length, but for me the space left would be claustrophobic. [The 25D seems to have more width AND more heigth as the bridge deck instead of having the nice curve that the Ariel has is straight and higher inside - it looks that way in a photo from the internet.] I'll be able to get legs up to my knees in there.

The 25D also raised that quarter berth looks like 4 to 6 inches under the cockpit, and it extends out into the cabin in way of the bridge. No comparison to the Ariel. The Ariel is more like a tern than a duck! What with matress and bedding there really won't be much room in an Ariel quarter berth! The locker room under would still be a flat, pointy triangular volume, with difficult access, and hardly suited even to a tank.

With all the quarter berth space the Commander has, I was fantasizing a stretch Ariel like the stretch limos you see here in the wine country. You know, like maybe 36'7" long?? Look like hell, but just think of the party you could have!!! Eveybody crawlingf around... but with enuf beer and martinis....noone would be feeling the lumps on their heads!