(This here be a looong post. )

Last Sunday I was, as ever, contemplating the boat, and more specifically, my interior and overall plans for the boat.

When I first dropped the mast and cut away the bulkhead a bit ago, I'd planned to construct and install a strongback straightaway. Gradually, as I tried to come up with what would (for me) be the 'bestmost' way to do that, I realized that I needed to give more thought to the overall interior before making the strongback, since it will all be tied together. Everything in these boats adds to or takes away from everything else, I know. So I've held off on the strongback while I figured out my overall plan, which was close to being fully conceived, but not quite.

One thing I will do which quite literally will tie the exterior rigging into the interior plans is to go to hull-mounted chainplates. I want them to be easily inspect-able and maintainable from the inside of the boat as well as the outside. Since interior stuff will be all around (and maybe over) the attachment points, I knew I had to finish my interior concept and place them within it before constructing anything.

SO... that leads to last Sunday, and interior thoughts, which I'll get to after another bit I want to add in here real quick...

A couple of weeks ago I got in touch with James Baldwin, 2-time circumnavigator aboard the Triton "Atom". He's a really nice guy. I spoke with him about his voyages, boat, collisions, and unsinkability. I told him of all my plans regarding my construction with the ultimate goal of unsinkability, and he is of the opinion that it will all work. ( Kewl! ) Until last Sunday, though, my design was unbalanced. I had good lockers planned for everywhere but the port berth, which I plan to use as my primary place of rest.

The 'default' berth is just under the waterline, and keeping that area open in case of a hull breach would allow a huge space for water, taking away from flotation *and* balance, if the boat were flooded. It would also be a 'light' area of the boat, so I had to counterbalance it with a near-equally empty area in the v-berth to control heeling. Not very efficient, and efficiency is an important consideration for what I am trying to do. I need to use every possible part of the boat.

Quick mention of 2 other "wishes" I've had for the boat: a dinette w/table (for comfort and usability, a la "Braveheart"), and an interior seat where I could see out the cabin deadlights when belowdecks.

I'd thought about the dinette a while back, but had pretty much decided that it was out. I plan to use the area under both cabin berths for water tankage (bladders) and flotation, so I didn't want to cut part of that out for the footroom needed if there was a dinette.

As far as the seat, I thought I might be able to, at some point in time, add a mount somewhere for a pedestal seat, like those you see on a bass boat. Maybe not the best solution, but a possibility...

I hadn't considered either of these in quite a long time.

But the brain works in mysterious ways, and that leads (at last) to last Sunday, when I realized I might be able to have a dinette *on top of* the current port berth, a dinette which would also convert into a berth. By making it to the height of the current counter top, it would be plenty long enough for sleeping, would give me storage underneath the ends *and* a footwell, without the need to get into the area where my water tanks and flotation will be. Eureka!

I tossed the idea around in my head this past week, and did some measuring. It seemed like it would work, so yesterday I got busy and slapped together a proof-of-concept dinette/berth. I disassembled the proof-of-concept v-berth storage bins , and used those pieces to make up a not-pretty, but working, version of the dinette idea.

It is great! Sitting at it, the view out the deadlights is perfect, and there is enough room for 2 people to sit across from each other comfortably (if not expansively). I had my dock neighbor, who is 6' 1" tall, try it out, and there was plenty of headroom for him.

The 'table' part drops down between the seats to make a normal Ariel-length single berth (which has a more-level view out the companionway). I did sit up a bit quickly this morning and hit my head on the underside of the sidedeck (not too hard, though, thankfully), but I imagine that I'll learn not to do that pretty quickly.

Right now this is just roughed in, but it works. I have a bunch of ideas to make it much more polished in its final form (fiddles for the table, folding seatback for the after seat, etc...). It helps solve a few problems, and gives me those 'wishes'. The storage underneath the ends allows me to balance the boat better, and will provide more closed space which can be sealed against H2O ingress to add to the overall flotation. I have the table hung from the overhead at it's outer end for support, instead of from
underneath as was done on "Braveheart", and I'll probably keep that element of the design.

Enough babbling, here are some pictures: