The first-series H25 came with a 12-foot-long berth to port. Having come up with the original concept for this interior when I was 14 or 15, I suggested that the ‘nav station’ be its own little cubbyhole but got vetoed by budget and marketing at Hunter, perhaps the first of many rude awakenings over the years about how these two departments, not engineering and design, govern how boats get made. So when I got an H25 for myself I was determined, as with the bridge deck, to rectify this fault and create something cooler about my boat for myself.
Immediately ahead of the quarter-berth I added a bulkhead to correspond to the forward bulkhead of the galley on the other side. In this photo the camera is leaning on the vertical grab post that terminates the inboard end of that bulkhead. But the original space was only 12’0” long, a kind of head-to-head double bunk. Putting in this bulkhead left the quarter bunk about 5’8”. So I would extend it.
[photo 2011.09 q.berth 1a.jpg]
Fortunately on poor Diana, the after bulkhead here, at the foot, being the mounting space for the (dumb) idea of the gas-can locker, had got so rotten from the boat’s being operated with the hatch open in rain that I was able to remove it... with no tools. One of the first things I did was to build a new bulkhead 9 inches farther aft and make a shelf over the foot end. It appears as a winch-handle shelf in the cockpit-seat hatch. The same shelf extends forward over the foot of the bunk, making a duffel-bag locker there (see the one at the far end, here cluttered with small boards and other stuff). The lockers along the side were an afterthought. I had a piece of wood in my hand, going around the boat fitting it into places, and suddenly got the Eureka idea to make what we used to have on C44s up front, the underwear, t-shirt and swimsuit ‘stuff lockers’ over the bunk.
This side locker face was VERY hard to fit properly. There was no structure here to rely upon-- I was measuring things in thin air. It is not parallel to the centreline nor to the angled side of the bunk. Immediately forward of it, in the space where the fiddle-rail shelf used to be, is the electrical panel. (In the photo the panel is lying back in the bunk with two rectangular holes for the switch panels. It appears here face-down; the switch panels are to the right when you look at it.) This was hard to fit against the back of the cabin but I finally just left the end long and figured I’d make some kind of bin in the back end, over the end of the fiddle-rail shelf. This end of the electrical panel actually formed a good anchoring point for this new locker face. I mounted it with no bottom and cut the bottom to fit. It’s bonded to the hull with 5200, lending strength and stiffness in this notoriously flimsy area.
The fit of the overhead of this space has yet to be determined. I intend the roof of the locker for the shotgun but have to install the traveler and backing plates before I can see what I have to screw the hinges and latches to.
The bit of what looks like plain trashy plywood in the back of the crosswise locker is a bit of plain trashy 3/8” CDX plywood I had been using for templates and the like till one day I got the silly idea to make dividers for these lockers out of it. Diligently I fit the pieces, sanded them carefully (try sanding CDX some time!) and saturated them in Salem sealer before installing them. As such they’re adequate for humidity and will last ages. Another divider is visible beside the blue duffel bag. One of them I signed (before the varnish and installation) as a tongue-and-cheek reminder to the next owner that I really did know what I was doing using this plain trashy plywood and that it was meant as a joke. The one in the back blocks off a ragged piece of ‘glass from the earlier bunk-foot structure.
The little cubbyhole down at the far end is where the original after bulkhead was-- its forward bulkhead is heavily ‘glassed to the hull. The two blades of ‘glass after where I cut it off have remained strong even though the wood between it was rotten to nothing. There’s still some (good) wood in there. The inside of this locker isn’t pretty-- I put it there mainly to trim off the remains of what had been there. I had to make a floor in it, uncharacteristically blocking off the space below to keep things from disappearing into an invisible and almost inaccessible wedge in there. I call this locker ‘Indiana’ because its plywood face is the shape of that state only mirrored. Beneath the foot of the bunk, beyond the original bulkhead (still there under the bunktop), is another locker against the inside of the hull. If you were to peel up the front of the mattress some day you would assume there are only the two stock traps under the bunk; so it might be a good hiding spot. But I’ve just said that in this blog; so you can rest assured that’s not the only secret spot this boat holds!
I will take other photos of the under-cockpit area and the ladder but I have been waiting to pretty it up with more trim. I have been going up and down that ladder about 6 years now and only recently have I considered that the treads might like another coat of varnish. Captain’s Varnish is made for spars and is excellent for durability as well as UV protection.
The trim around the lockers came from C44 hull 5, which was in for restoration while I was collecting scrap wood. The wood is only 3 years younger than this (1974) boat. The trim around the teak cabin back looks washed-out from the flash, but it is really more golden than the long-varnished other stuff, and it is all Honduras mahogany (not the pretend stuff you get now). I just screwed it on and let the screws show-- it’s too thin for plugs and it’s how the trim was originally on this boat. I also don’t believe in staining wood that’s already pretty. I leave it as-is, apply sealer and then Captain’s Varnish and let it have its own identity. So the interior appears a mix-up of varying wood colors, which is exactly how it should be. It reflects the reality and naturalness of the natural material. (Also it is much less work.) I tried a bit of stain on a bit of mahogany-plywood bulkhead and even though I used only a very little it got so black that it was downright ugly and I remade the piece and just varnished it as-is. Varnished mahogany marine plywood, going back to the Cherubini Sea Scamp days, is as much of my heritage as are original artwork, Roman Catholicism and frozen waffles. In this boat I am surrounded by what I am.
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Looks great!
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