The Whitby interior design is pretty roomy with plenty of storage. There's a bonus: plenty of inaccessible space, too.
This is a photo of the space under the aft berth (port side, if you're keeping score.) You can clearly see three things. One the left (astern) is a lift-up panel to access yet more nearly inaccessible storage. On the right (ahead) is a drawer. With the berth in place, the only accessible space is the drawer. The rest of the volume is very difficult to use.
(The tubing is the hydraulics for the steering system.)
CA's plan has two parts:
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Remove the drawer box. Replace it with a simple door. In the forward cabin we built cool fold-down doors with elbow latches, chains and finger holes. In the aft cabin we're thinking that we'll just nail the old drawer front in place as a purely cosmetic space filler.
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Rebuild the cushions to allow easy access to the top of this space. This involves cutting the old cushions into pieces with an electric carving knife (Thanks Linh!) and then building new covers based on the new shapes.
She did this in the forward cabin, and it looks like it will work nicely. See Cushion Rebuilds, Part 4, Installed. Measuring and sizing requires some experience; which she's gaining with each new cushion she builds.
Downsizing R2D2
For the past few years, we've been making steady use of a ShopVac All Around that came with the boat. A robust and useful device. We called it "R2D2". It's locker was the "R2D2 Locker".
It's also rather large. And—with casters—a little annoying to use on a sloping deck. While we could remove the casters; that doesn't really solve the "large" problem.
The old R2 unit was 7A and held 2.5 gallons. We never filled it. The new Mini Me unit is 6.2A and only holds 1 gallon. The air flow from R2D3 was 130 CFM; Mini Me is 125. Smaller volume; similar levels of suck.
We're big fans of the Shop Vac brand. They seem to use nicely compatible filters for various problems.
Bonus. The Shop Vac foam filters are the right size for air filters that Mr. Lehman. uses.
