Im well into the finishing the wood work in the guest cabin ( kids cabin ), and Im feeling good regarding my schedule of having the wood work finished before the end of Spring. Since I do not need to do any welding regarding the pilot house install above this area of the boat, Im going to go ahead and install the ceiling, doors, and light fixtures before I start a new area on the boat. The pilot house is directly above the master cabin and bathroom, so I have to wait to install those ceilings until after I weld the pilot house to the boat deck.
The guest cabin has four permanent bunks with two being on the port side, and two on the starboard side. The bunks are 24" wide, and 6 6" long. The framing is steel wrapped in wood with a 3/4" plywood deck. The clearance
between the lower and upper bunks after the 4" mattresses are installed will be 23". Each bunk will have its own reading light. I wired the guest cabin with an AC receptacle along with a coaxial receptacle on the bathroom wall so a TV could be installed. There will be three ceiling light fixtures in the guest cabin that will be controlled by one switch. Each of the reading lights for the bunks will have their own switch. All off the lights on the boat, along with the guest cabin lights, will be LED type fixtures.Because of the way the bunks had to be installed, I created a divider between the two lower bunks. This is a fairly good sized room in terms of a bunk room on a mid sized yacht, but I am cramming a lot of function into a relatively compact space and I have to pay attention to make sure the occupants have their "own space". The divider walls off about 16" of bunk, and goes a long way towards helping those in the lower bunks feel as if they have some privacy. If I were going to sleep on one of the lower bunks, without the divider, Id be in a constant state of bad attitude given the closeness. The divider will also serve as a point to locate the ladder that will be needed to access the upper bunks. The divider also ( some more dumb luck) acts as a vent for the blanket chest which in turns will allow ventilation into the bilge. A small fan placed in the open bottom end of the divider has the potential to provide air flow all the way down the bilge to station #9 which is the water tight steel bulkhead of the engine room.
The guest cabin area of the boat is a pretty complex room given the extreme curvature of the hull, the odd shapes Ive created, and the obvious challenge of getting so much sleeping and storage area into a tight space. To be honest with you , a 55 footer would have suited us a little better, but that was not in the budget. The maximized space of the bunk room works well in my opinion now that I created the guest cabin dressing room. These two rooms compliment each other extremely well and one room now relies upon the other. With the future installations of bunk curtains, privacy, might be a little easier by all on our little trawler yacht.
This room is going to take a few posts to work through, so being the creative guy that I am, I decided to start at the beginning. Breaking the bunk room down to a basic level, the room is sheathed with 1/2" birch plywood, then all the bunks and cabinetry are being built out of the air dried Cherry.
We will be using a deck winch to handle our anchor gear, so the huge anchor chain locker in the guest cabin will not be used for the anchor chain. Im acting like the locker will be used for anchor chain ( possible future use), so I installed the drain in the bottom of the locker along with the water tight door I fabricated. The water tight door kind of ruins the ambiance of the wood work, so I built a wood door to cover the steel door. The wood door is held in place by a wedge and some Velcro, and takes about two seconds to remove. One heavy duty door dog along with a heavy 1 1/2" rubber gasket is what creates the seal for the steel door. The door dog came from the water tight door I cut down in order to make a door for the rear of the engine room.
