...........................................................--- Cockpit Cushions Part III ---
I took the following pictures when we were tied up a Jensen's "Twin Palm" cottages in Captiva, Florida in the fall of 2010. This was the first trip for the cushions and we loved them. We had a lot of dew the first couple days and the cushions dried very quickly and in fact usually we just turned them over. It rained hard a couple times and then we put a towel on them for a couple hours and then were able to use them. Our old ones would of been a soggy mess for a couple days.
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You can see that they could of been maybe a touch tighter, but what the heck they are way better than the original ones.
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We normally didn't sail with the one in front of the traveler, but could of. You can step on it or across it and straight onto the top step of the companionway. Also there was a couple times I wanted to sit in the companion way entrance and it was nice then. The rest of the time it was below either up on the V-berth or back where the aft berth is.
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The pictures show all of the cushions in place, but a lot of time we didn't have them all in the cockpit. We wanted to break them up so that we had more options with them and because they are easier to handle and store this way.
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Some times we didn't have the back ones on either side in place. Ruth preferred not having the back one at times, especially if docking or anchoring. I usually had the back ones in place forward as I liked them while moving from side to side handling the sails.
We now have a 19 gallon internal gas tank, but if we would still be using the old tank we would of removed the back and bottom cushions on the port side and would of had the portable tank up there on the seat like we use to tied in place. Before we had to take the long cushions and bend them up to do that.
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Here the cockpit bed boards are in place. This is about a 2 minute or less job. The two end ones with the cup holders in them were left in place all of the time that we were on the water and were stored when the boat was on the trailer.
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The cushions were sized so that they fill the cockpit for when we want to sleep there. The dark blue small long cushion is covered with sunbrella and only used when we want the bed.
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A view looking forward.
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We ran out of time, but when we finally get the boat back home we are going to sew some straps on the zipper side that we can run a line through if we are concerned about the cushions being blown over board. For now if they were predicting high winds I ran some lines over them at night. Actually they wedge in place pretty good and the lines probably aren't needed, but I would hate to loose one.
