Bolero Project | Wednesday, April 2, 2008

The Porta-Potty is out.

Following Monday's mockup and rather a bit of discussion, the owner decided that accommodating the Porta-Potty in this diminutive cabin simply required more compromises than he cared to make.  So he'd make other arrangements when needed (which I'm sure we need not go into in detail here) and I'd press on with a head-free cabin arrangement.  Good enough.

To that end, we discussed slight modifications to the v-berth shape and the area where the head might have gone--the space just aft of the mast.  We now had an opportunity to extend, albeit at a different height, the cabin sole and berth opening further forward, using the mahogany mast beam as a platform height for the extended sole.

I made some changes to the cardboard mockup to illustrate how something like this might look.  I didn't bother with sides and a forward end, since I didn't feel they were necessary, but the new shape gives an idea.  The sole, for lack of a better term, would be flush with the mahogany mast support beam and  extended out to meet the (absent in this mockup) vertical sides of the berth, similar to those in the after portion of the cabin.

In the first iteration, I extended the berth cutout to a point just forward of where the mast would go--the mast simulated here by the level in the photos.  The measurement (roughly) to the leading edge of the mast shown here is 28" from the aft end of the mast support beam, and about 27" aft of the forward bulkhead.  The end of the cutout is an inch or two forward of the leading edge of the mast, and the secondary sole height is about 5" below the berth top.  This iteration would leave the mast, mast step, and supporting structure exposed.


         


In an second, even less elegantly executed iteration, I reduced the length of the new opening to a point just aft of the mast, where a vertical bulkhead would close off the area.  This iteration would hide the mast step beneath a panel in the berth platform, and the mast would "disappear" into and through the cushions to the step.



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