Trying to stay in bed!
Having primarily sailed on catamarans, one thing we haven’t yet had to deal with all that much is sleeping while our boat is heeled at 15 degrees or so. When making way on Frost though, with gravity continually working to slide us into the lowest spot on the boat, if we’re not careful, we may find ourselves lying on the floor instead of on our nice, comfortable bunks. We found this especially true in our aft cabin when were sailing on a port tack, as we were all the way south from Martinique.
Lee cloths are the traditional solution that sailors use to deal with this sleeping-while-heeling problem. Our friend Brittany nicely describes the process that she went through to sew some for their boat. Amels, are unique in many ways, and that includes how they deal with this issue. Instead of having lee cloths, Amels are actually supplied with lee boards (at least the Maramus are — I can’t speak for other Amels), and for the first time since we’ve owned the boat, we actually had to put them to use.
Storage for lee boards. Forward cabin has a similar setup.
Salon settee berth.
Backrest flips over to take the place of a lee cloth.
I’m not sure those lee boards are tall enough if the boat is at an extreme angle of heel!
If the boat is heeling so much that I’m going to fall over those boards, we’ve got issues, and I doubt that I’d be sleeping!
Nice post guys. Here’s to very few mornings waking up and kissing a lee board. 🙂
🙂
Hmmm. Seems like all the way to Patagonia?
Undoubtedly.
How crazy out of line would it be to have a gimbaled bed? It seems like a single pivot point you could make this problem go away for the most part. A couple of pins could lock it into different positions if desired. You might lose a little precious space to do it.
I don’t see that it would solve anything. The angle of heel is far from constant, and if it wasn’t locked, the boat’s roll would create a nausea-inducing motion. It’s really not that big a deal. Old school works just fine, in this case.
What a great problem to have.
A sailor’s life.