It seems one of the inevitable facts of PNW cruising life... is The Pile of fleeces and coats. Every boat I have been on, you just end up with "The Pile." That's because we need several kinds of outerwear here. You need fleece for warmth, a shell for rain. When there's four of you, it's easy to end up with 10 garments of various kinds. You come in from say anchor duty, it's time to depart the anchorage, so you don't go below and hang up your coat, you put it on The Pile. Same with PFD's. They go on The Pile. Building our boat with lots of customization possible, Deb and I wanted to do something about this. If you know Hampton Endurance boats, you know that they have bar stools in front of the galley. In the Youtube video, Captain Steve makes a big deal about the clever way Hampton captures the front legs of the bar stools to prevent them from falling in a seaway. But even on a boat this large, the bar stools create something that has to be walked around. We didn't think they would be that useful in our situation, so we decided to eliminate them and use this space for The Anti-Pile. We thought we would just buy some kind of hooks at Home Depot and attach them underneath the bar counter (since they aren't really seen anyway). But the factory insisted on making something custom. This large hook Deb is placing is for PFD's. It can hold perhaps six inflatables or two/three standard ones. The factory made a mockup of the hooks, which we approved. Then in less than two hours they had made these beauties. Installing the hooks at our desired spacing. Factory owner Jeff Chen looking on (talk about hands on...). First demo of our new coat hooks! We see this usage for cruising. Obviously when not cruising we won't have a bunch of fleeces just hanging around in our nice pilothouse.
I am second guessing the no barstool idea. I think one there in the corner would be nice. So someone can have a seat and talk with the chef. We can always have the factory make us one and ship with another boat heading to Seattle, no biggie. What's the other Pile you often find besides coats/pfds? That's right, shoes! Well see those shelves at the end there? That's right, sized to store "outside shoes."
1 Comment
Bong
5/22/2018 08:23:57 am
Are you going to put anything to prevent scuff marks on the wall behind the jackets and pfd's? I can imaging the stuff swaying laterally and potentally leaving scuff marks? Hope not. Great idea to help keep piles from forming!
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
January 2020
Categories
All
|