Getting the Boat Ready for Big Blue

Part I – Beware of Flying Objects

September 16, 2022

A boat at sea is very much like an airplane in flight, it moves in all three axes: pitch, roll, and yaw and sometimes aggressively so. Part of our pre-launch preparations were to make sure that the crew would be safe inside of our little cocoon at sea if we ever encountered extremes of any of those rotations, particularly roll! It is amazing if you look around the inside of your boat and ask yourself, “what in here could be weaponized if we ever turned turtle and were pitching and rolling in a big sea?” There are tons of things that, if loose and thrashing about, could cause serious damage to those in their way. This post highlights a few of the modifications we made to Rejoice in the past several months securing those things in an effort to prepare the boat for a serious ocean.  

Cabin Sole Hatches

We have two primary access points to the bilge for inspection and storage, both have heavy hatches that lift out with a ring pull. Gravity was the only thing securing them in place so they were the first items of business in “upside-down proofing” the boat. We brought the hatch panels into the shop and after some trepidation and a hard swallow routed, bored, and drilled them  to accept a cam latch pull that will lock one end to the floor frame below. A block with an aluminum tab was screwed underneath to the other end. The system works great, just rotate the cam pull handle to disengage the locking arm below, lift and slid the panel forward to clear the aft aluminum tab from the floor frame and then lift the whole thing out – presto, hatch secured.

Head Grating

Like most vessels the size of Rejoice, our head doubles as a shower with a teak grate over a floor pan and a drain sump that collects and evacuates grey water. The grate fits the floor pan well and stays pretty well put in a normal seaway but would be lethal if it was allowed to be tossed from its seat in an extreme roll. We screwed and bedded two stainless steel washers to the floor to restrain one side of the grate and added a door button to secure the opposing end. This arrangement secures the grate while still allowing removal for cleaning or retrieving all those little odds and ends that invariably get dropped and fall through.

Companionway Ladders

We have two companionway ladders to exit the cabin to the cockpit. The primary ladder is large and heavy and leads from the cabin sole to the engine compartment lid. A smaller ladder goes from there to the companionway. Each have barrel-bolts on their port legs affixing them to the structures they rest on. The barrel-bolts secure the ladders in pitch and yaw but wouldn’t do a thing to secure them in a big roll. We certainly didn’t want those things flying around unrestrained. The fix was to add “speed pins” to each of their upper mounting brackets. The brackets are made of chromed bronze and took a very sharp drill to get through, but after a little alignment finagling, the pins fit and were easily inserted and removed. Those pinned ladders aren’t going anywhere unless we want them to!

Icebox Lid

A sailboat’s ice box, or more commonly called “reefer” (the reefer deck is an old Navy reference to where refrigerated food was stored, not what you might be thinking) usually has a heavy, insulated lid that is hinged in the middle. You can lift the entire lid out with a ring pull in each side, or just open one side or the other to find what you want. Again, nothing at all to restrain it if gravity was working to remove it rather than keep it in place. The solution was to fashion channel aluminum into brackets that would accept a beautiful (and strong) length of ash across the lid to be pinned in place as part of our heavy weather preparation. It just takes seconds to install and completely secures a potentially big chunk of flying hardware.

Navigation Tabletop

Last but not least was to secure the hinged navigation table lid. It is attached to the desk, but free to open if inverted spilling out all the odds-and-ends that just seem to accumulate there. Such a circumstance would not necessarily be a disaster but would make a mess just when you don’t need another one! A simple door button added to the table frame did the trick. It is low profile, easy to install and effective. 

We certainly hope that every sailing day will be a 15 knot reach in calm seas and that these preparations are excessive but, as I used to say when working, “hope is not a good business plan.” I believe that to be particularly true when planning a voyage offshore!