My father is a shipwright, which has its benefits when I can tempt him down to Triola with promises of an endless stream of cups of coffee, my wife’s baking and unfettered access to “Drawer number three” (traditionally stuffed full of sugary treats and chocolate bars designed to keep energy up on dark nights at passage).
The starboard pilot berth had always been a bit of a bug bear of mine, it contained a box that took up most of the space to just house an FM radio – so lots of wasted space. The radio itself was a venerable beast that only picked up Gold AM (which as a result we became rather fond of). In addition to this, I have always been a firm believer that every boat should have some form of book shelf, so I hatched a devious plan to encourage my father to rebuild the berth into some additional storage and a lovely book case, whilst moving the FM radio over to its rightful place on the chart table.
Old FM Radio box
So, rather a lot of money was spent on marine ply (that I didn’t really have at the time, but I thought what the hell), and we got to work ripping the radio out, and preparing the space.
Work in progress
The resulting cupboards and bookshelf are literally a work of art. From pilot books, to novels, to almanacs, to childrens pop up books are stored there.
Looks great!
I am thinking about doing something similar to one of the pilot berths in our Ballad.
Do you have any techincal drawings lying about for this, perchance?