- Date: March 17, 1987
- Location: Cairns, Australia
- Subject: Tour of Sacha-B, My Floating Home
Hello new friend and diary.
Today is day two with you and I am already stumped about what to write about. Mom thought describing our sailboat and home “Sacha-B” would be a good start. She said a lot of people don’t know what’s inside a sailboat, so they have a hard time understanding how people can live on a boat. I never thought of that. Mom also said that once I start writing many more ideas will come up and I can make a list for future entries. So here goes………
Welcome aboard! Once you climb over the lifelines (wire fence that goes around the deck of the boat, so you don’t fall overboard) you can take two steps across the deck and one step down into the cockpit. The cockpit is our outdoor seating area-like a porch of a house. There are two benches, one on either side of the boat. Four adults can sit comfortably, though we have crammed lots more people than that on many occasions. The benches are built into the hull (the main part of the boat), but Mom made some very squishy, comfy cushions. We can remove the cushions when it rains, so they stay dry. One not so great thing about the cockpit is it has a very large winches on each bench, which gets in the way of laying down on the bench. The winches are the part of the sailing boat that helps pull in the sails, when we wrap the main sheets (rope from the main sail) around it. There is a bunch of science behind how the winches work, so I will save that for another day.
If you face forward, to the bow (the pointy end of the boat), there is an opening that leads to the downstairs, or “below deck”, which is our home. The opening is called the “main hatchway.” Once you go through the hatch, you are on the companionway. The companionway are the steps or ladder that gets you down into the boat. Sacha-B’s companionway is 3 steps down, and “TA DA” you are in the main cabin of the boat, our living room, or “saloon” in boat talk. All rooms in a boat are called cabins, and sometimes they have special names.
- Saloon-living room
- Kitchen-galley
- Bedroom-berth or bunk
- Bathroom-head
Anyway, our saloon is big by boat standards, about 12 x 12 feet. There are built in couches (settees) on both the starboard (right) and port (left) sides of the cabin. The cool thing about the settees is underneath the seat cushions and behind the back cushion are HUGE surprises in the form of storage!! There is a whole universe of nooks and crannies of secret storage spaces. Under the starboard settees cushion is a trap door that goes to the fridge and a trap door that goes to the deep freezer. The fridge is where we can store our fruits, veggies, and other foods that need to be kept cool. The freezer is twice as big as the fridge and can be jam packet with food. If we don’t have the freezer filled with food frozen, we fill up the space with bottles of water. This helps keep the freezer running efficiently. I will write more about that later. Both settees can convert into sleeping bunks, if we had company sleepover.
The other cool thing about our saloon is it has an inside steering wheel, known as a helm, and a special tall chair that is bolted into the floor and a special round lookout window. This set-up is for sailing in really rough weather, so we don’t have to be outside to steer. Capt says if he NEVER has to use the rough weather inside steering, then it is already worth the extra money it cost to install it. And if he did have to use the rough weather because the weather was too terrible that he could not steer from outside, then the investment is worth its weight in gold. I have never sailed in such bad weather that we could not steer from outside-so I guess I just don’t really know. All around the saloon are windows, so it is usually bright and sunny. Only one hatch (window) opens, which is just above the step that goes down into the kitchen. Capt says, the more things you have that open, the more things that could leak or break.
One step down from the saloon is the kitchen, or galley. This is my favor spot in the boat because I love to cook and bake and clean up. The galley is rectangular and about 6 feet long and 8 feet wide. Along the port side is a counter and a sink and metal drain board. There is plenty of drawers and cabinets to store all our kitchenware like plates, cups, silverware, pots and pans, baking bowls and stuff like that. On the starboard side is the 4-burner propane gas stove/oven. We are lucky because most boats have small tiny stoves, but we have a normal size stove/oven. Like most stove/ovens on boats, the stove/oven is gimbaled. This means when the stove was installed in the boat it was fitted around a frame that lets the stove stay level, even when the boat is bouncing around by the wind and waves. If the stove couldn’t move or swing with the movement of the boat, then whatever you were cooking would slide off the stove and end up all over the galley, and maybe burn you. Our stove is usually locked so it doesn’t swing in normal times and we can unlock it when we need it to gimbal or swing, when we are sailing.
Next to the stove is the galley table and bench. The three of us can fit at the table and eat, but we usually eat all our meals outside in the cockpit. A lot of the time my school papers, books and art stuff ends up on the galley table. On the wall, behind the table and stove, are a bunch of cabinets that have sliding doors. This is where we store things like tea-towels, cookbooks, and baking sheets. This is also where we keep the treats like potato chips, crackers and candy. Mom says she keeps the good stuff there because it is hard to get to and the sliding doors makes a squeaky noise, so she always knows when we are trying to sneak a treat. The galley is nice, but it is a bit dark and stuffy because there is no hatch. I dream of a way to put a hatch in the galley and sometimes I make this suggestion to Capt and he smiles and says- “Just put that on the wish list and we will get to it when we get to it.” I guess we won’t get to it.
The bathroom, or head is a small room, but really for a bathroom on a boat it is pretty big. There is a hand pump toilet-which I will talk about another time, it will take me all day to describe how to use it. There is also a small sink, with fresh water faucet, shower head and a good size storage cabinet. Inside the storage cabinet are four removable plastic baskets. We each have our own basket to keep our bathroom stuff in. My basket is purple-like everything I own, because I love purple. I have some special soaps, kid toothpaste, hair stuff, etc. Mom’s basket is red, Capt’s is blue and the fourth basket is yellow. The yellow basket holds general stuff anyone of us might need, rubbing alcohol, powder, band aids, cough medicine, Q-tips and the such. The levered door to the head, from the pantry, can be locked closed when you are in the head, and when you are finished showering, you can open the door and clip it onto a lock on the pantry ceiling, so the door stays open. This allows the air to circulate and dry out the head a bit.
One step out of the galley, going forward, through the doorway in the bulkhead (any wall that divides rooms or cabins of a boat), and we are in the little hallway we call the pantry. To the starboard, is the head or bathroom, and to the port is our pantry closet. Two levered doors open to a bunch of shelves and spaces to put our everyday dry foods like pasta, soups, jellies, baking supplies, peanut butter and some canned goods. Mom has a very strict way of organizing the stuff that goes in there and gets very upset when things get moved around. She told me that we have to keep track of all the food so it doesn’t spoil and so we don’t waste it. I do see her point, especially now that I get to do much of the cooking and need to make sure everything I want is there, and I can find it.
All the doors and cabinets and drawers on the boat have locks to keep them closed during sailing. Most of the cabinets on “Sacha-B” have sliding doors so they can’t open and swing on their hinges during sailing. Like I said, the doors that swing open can be locked either open or closed. There is nothing more annoying than a door banging when the boat is sailing, or even rolling at an anchorage.
One step from the pantry is my bedroom, which is called the V-berth because the bed looks like a V. It is wider at the part I crawl into and get narrower towards the bow of the boat. I started out having 2 very small bunks, and each bunk had a lee-board, which were beautifully carved boards screwed to the edge of the bunks-like a rail on a baby’s crib. The boards were there to keep you in the bunk if you were trying to sleep during a long rough passage, and the boat was heeling or bouncing around. Capt did not think it was practical because we were not going to do too many long passages. By removing the lee-boards Capt was able to convert the 2 small bunks into one big bunk–ALL for me!! I love having all that space to sleep in, read in, play in, and write in. I have a curtain that I can pull close if I want to be alone. I also have a big hatch over my bunk, which lets the breeze in. I have two 6-inch fans that I can turn on if it is really hot and two reading lights. I like to sleep crossways and store most of my stuff at the pointy end (bow) of my bunk. There are also built in cabinets along the walls to store my clothes and other things that I love. Under my bed is also a bunch of storage-but it is mostly stuff we don’t use much like spare anchor chains, winter clothes and extra foul weather gear, boots and of course bottles and bottles of home brew beer. More on that later. So, to sum it up…I love my bunk.
Let’s go back to the saloon and face aft towards the stern of the boat. To the left of the companionway, one step down is a desk with all the navigation equipment mounted to the wall. This is the navigation desk and the “heart and brains” of the operation, as Capt says. This is the area where we put the navigation charts, maps used by sailors and spend time figuring out where we are and what we must do to get safely to our next port of call. Across from the Nav. station is a hanging locker, large enough to hang our wet foul weather gear, such as raincoats, hats and boots).
One more step, through the doorway on the aft bulkhead and we are in the aft cabin, or the captain’s quarters. This is where Mom and Capt sleep. They have a big bunk on the port side. Under the bunk is tons of storage for things we don’t use often. On the starboard side is a very large built -in closet with 3 levered doors. Inside the closet is a bar to hang up clothes and some shelves on the aft side, for Mom and Capt to store clothes. At the very back of the cabin is a small build in dresser with a mirror and a hatch in the ceiling to let some air into the cabin.
Well, that was a ton of writing, but now you know what our home looks like. Here is a drawing of what I just talked about, and a list of future ideas: winches, freezer, toilet and making beer.
