(You are on the AFT CABIN page, a part of the GEAR blog. Click HERE to return to the GEAR PAGE or use your browsers back button to return to where you were).

Fellow Traveler is a Moorings 461, build by Morgan for the Moorings Charter company.  There are some basic differences between these boats and the "owner's version", including the aft cabin layout. You can click HERE to see the original layout. I found the aft cabin layout impractical for my purposes, so in 2009 I undertook a major refit and layout change. In planning these changes, I was greatly helped by doing 3-D mockups using Google Sketchup, a free 3D modeling program. I have experimented several times in the past with free versions of such programs and found them all hard to use and extremely limited in capabilities. Google Sketchup, on the otherhand, is as easy as a complicated, powerful program can be, and is quite impressive and fun to play with. Below are screen shots of the 3D model showing before and after shots of the cabin from different angles.

Basically, the problems I had with the aft cabin are as follows: the fore and aft singles, I figured, would make decent sea bunks, using the leeward bunk when heeled over on the wind. However, this proved not to be true. First, if your head is at the wide end, it is below your feet due to the bunks following the curve of the hull. Second, you end up under the low shelf as you brace yourself into the junction of the hull and bunk. This was quite claustrophobic for me, as well as risking banging my head if I sat up quickly! The athwartship double, at 52 inches wide, was two narrow for a big person like me to share with someone else. One person ended up under the aft deck with limit air flow, and neither had adequate room. Lastly, due to the lack of storage space, items inevitably ended up piled onto the cabin sole or the single bunk wings.

My solution was to eliminate the extensions that formed the single fore and aft bunks. As it turns out, the two existing lockers at the heads of these bunks were just over 80 inches apart....the standard length of US beds. So, I merely extended the bulkheads that formed the faces of these lockers all the way to the aft bulkhead. A single sheet of plywood is more than large enough to form one of these extensions, making an easy job of it. This boxed in a large section of the cabin out under the side decks that became new storage.

As to the athwartship bunk, I initially planned on widening this to a standard queen bed size. But, a queen is only 8 inches wider than a standard double. As I say, I am pretty big, and I still have hopes of finding someone to share my bunk with me long term, so decided I would go even wider. King size is too big, eliminating nearly all the floor space in the cabin. Thus, I opted for splitting the difference and extended the bunk out half way between a queen and a king bed width, or 68 inches. I really like sleeping athwartship, and find this the most comfortable on Fellow Traveler on all points of sail. I had some friends a few days behind me on the Galapapagos to Gambier sail on a boat with the layout most people seek these days: and aft cabin with a fore and aft double. I asked the owner how this worked for him on the passage. His reply was that it was OK when he was in the bunk alone, as he slept on it athwartship. However, when both he and his wife were off watch (he had one additional crew) he said he found it rather uncomfortable, and thought my bunk would work better. About the only drawback of the athwartship is that the one occupant has to climb over the other if he/she gets up in the night. And, perhaps, in very light winds, the person more aft might get less breeze. However, he is sleeping where BOTH persons heads and torso would be on a fore and aft double, so perhaps this is an advantage, not a drawback

The wider bunk left adequate floor space to enter the cabin, use the door to the head, open lockers, etc. Where the port bunk extension was I built a circular seat, the lid of which opens to reveal a small laundry bin. The starboard bunk extension was enclosed in a small bedside table that has a locker built into it. The  four drawers in the original design were under these single bunk wings. However, the extension of the athwartship bunk provided plenty of space to mount the same drawers in the new face. As these drawers are 13 1/2 inches deep, a queen width bunk would not have allowed this without cutting openings into the old bulkhead that faced the front of the original bunk. Below is a slide show photo gallery showing the 3D mockups, from different perspectives. Click on any image to enlarge.

 

Orginal cabin, looking aft.	Current cabin, looking aft.
Original cabin, port side	Current cabin, port side.
Original cabin, starboard.	Current cabin, starboard.
Original cabin, overhead perspective.	Current cabin, overhead perspective (note: this view does not show the sides of the hull and the space inside the new lockers).

At the same time I refit the aft cabin, I decided to once again modify my passageway area. As described on the main GEAR page, I eliminated the upper and lower bunks the charter versions had hear, replacing them with a large tool bin with a comfortable single bunk on the top of it. At the time, I intended to used Fellow Traveler for "backpacker" charters, and needed a reasonable number of decent bunks. I no longer need or want to do these charters, so no longer needed the bunk there. Thus, I raised the top of the bunk up again, forming a work bench and again increasing my tool storage and allowing me to better organize it. The owner's versions of the Morgan 461/462 come with a tool bench in this location. I still mostly am using bins, not drawers,  for storage as they are both easier to build and provide more usable space. I did a 3D mockup for this as well, but in the end, it was more complicated than I needed, and ignored it and just made a simpler version (i.e., the top-loading bins for most of it). I bought a standard, plastic storage unit that has lots of small drawers to better sort my nuts and bolts collection. As these are designed for shore, the drawers will all fly open and spill contents when heeled one direction, so I cut a piece of plywood that slips in front of it to hold it in place and the drawers closed.