Cockpit for dummies.
What I write now is not meant for Annie. She certainly deserves an ‘A’ in carpentry, and needs no help.
However, I once had to rebuild the cockpit of a 26’ clinker-built boat after having gutted her and replaced the nails and frames. I felt lucky that the cockpit was not to be self-draining, so making the hatches was not such a big deal - well within my wood-butcher capabilities.
Only when toying with designing a garvey-style (3-plank plywood) boat with 7-metre waterline, did I spend some calories ponding on how to make a self-draining cockpit. I concluded that the easiest would be to first make a wall-to-wall cockpit floor, that is, from hullside to hullside. It would be given a 2-4° aft slope for self-draining and be high enough for both safe self-draining and some access under it from the cabin (as in Annie’s SibLim).
The cockpit benches should be made as closed chests, one or two on each side. They would have to be secured with bolts or lashes to the cockpit floor, and have a couple of drain holes which could be closed.
This setup would only have one disadvantage over a normal cockpit locker: It would weigh a bit more.
On the other hand, there would be some advantages.
· No water leaking into the lockers would end up inside the boat.
· The lockers would not be very deep.
· One could easily alter the benches/chests, making the footwell narrower or wider, or the benches higher or lower, without wrecking the whole cockpit in the process.
The resulting dry interior, easy construction and flexibility with respect to changes, looked very attractive to me.
From my armchair,
Arne