Still More Stuff, Even Less Room

While on the subject of creating storage room, related to you in the previous post, I'll fill you in on some other decisions we had to make to find room on Swing Set for more storage. Early in the Spring of 2011 we put our "Dock-o-minium" up for sale at the Duck Club Yacht Club. We were lucky to find a buyer early on and arranged a closing date to suit us and the buyer. I included our two 6' long dock boxes in the sale as we surely didn't have room for them on the boat.
We arranged a lease with another Duck Club dock owner and it was an easy move to another slip, but what about all that stuff in those two dock boxes?

 For a while the back of our Explorer looked like the Sanford and Son truck, full of the things I couldn't readily find room for aboard Swing Set. Being an older Sea Ray, Swing Set had a floor plan on the flybridge that was not nearly as efficient as the newer models. The aft section of the bridge consisted of a sunpad. The radar arch and the back portion of the bimini blocked most of the sun for this area, so the pad was taken out long ago and a couple of deck chairs filled the space. (We were able to utilize some of the vinyl from both the flybridge pad and the bow pads to re-upholster a cockpit bench seat so a perfect match was achieved. Think twice about just pitching those unwanted sun pads, and especially, save the zippers.) We purchased a 4' long dock box that fit perfectly in this area. Since the Igloo cooler that occupied the cockpit was assigned to the dingy as a seat, there was room in the cockpit now for the two West Marine deck chairs. These deck chairs quickly became everyones favorite place to sit. I had originally had fantasies of putting two fold-up bicycles in this box, or for a short delusional moment, thought I could fit a fold-up mini bike in this space. Once I realized what a chore it would be to wrestle a 64 pound mini bike from the bridge to the dinghy, then to the shore, I quickly dismissed the idea of a mini-bike on the boat. But I sure like mini-bikes! The idea of bicycles finally faded once I realized the space they would require and there would still be no room for all the stuff that had become homeless once the two 6' dock boxes were no longer ours. Still thinking about the bicycles though.

 In this view you can see the small dock box on the flybridge. In it we keep all of our boat washing supplies like buckets, brushes, soap, etc. Waxing supplies like three orbital polishers and well, wax and cleaners take up a fair amount of room. A wet-vac (a necessity) and a good supply of "boat towels" fill the rest of the space.
 Some other changes we made on Swing Set can be seen in this picture. Starting at the bottom you can see the rollers for our dinghy brackets, and the brackets themselves. We attached a Magna Grill to one of the dinghy brackets. (We got a round one so a frying pan or soup kettle for boiling lobster fits nicely on it.) There is a rod holder installed on each side of the cockpit and another two attached to the railings on each side of the flybridge. Our throwable life ring was moved to a more convenient location for deploying, and behind it is a hose rack with enough hose to reach all the areas on board from bow to stern. Some additional dock line hangers were placed on the bridge and in the cockpit. An Engel cooler was placed on the bridge next to the dock box when the desired supply for cold beer exceeds the limits of our refrigerator in the galley. You can also see a clothes line stretched from one side of the flybridge to the other, complete with wooden clothes pins. It's not pretty, but very functional.
 Last but not least are those two wind generators at the very top of the picture, spinning their little guts out. The story concerning the acquisition and installation of those wind generators will be in an upcoming post. If the phrase, "Curb your enthusiasm" hasn't already been used for a T.V. show, I would use it here.