The forward cockpit sides are put in early - before the decks go on, the aft edge of the cockpit is defined by a bulkhead that runs across the boat that joins to the centreboard case creating a double bedroom forward of it. I had a minimum cockpit length of 1.7m defined in my mind, just drew it out on the floor and thought that was long enough. To get the mast in a better place like further aft the designer shortened the cockpit to 1.5m. I did not want this 1.7 was the shortest I wanted, solution make the boat 500mm longer in the bows which, in a way, does move the mast aft. So we have 1.7 and it looks about right.

The cabin top windows intrude over cockpit side by 700mm or so, effectively only giving me a very short distance aft of the mast to mount my sheet winches and a bit of track to take the clew of the headsail, so a LP of 100% is on the cards for the Genoa, but it is one kick arse mainsail, forward edge of the cockpit is the mast bulkhead.

Aft Cockpit

This area is going to be the lounging around, watching the world go by place, or posing area outside of waterside bars, or even hauling in the odd Spanish Mackeral place. Underway I expect to spend a lot of time in the forward cockpit, watching where we are going - hopefully very fast. Aft cockpit (port side) is going to contain a day bed - sort of a mini day bed as I just did not have enough room to make it as long as I wanted to. Starboard will be a seating for meals and a table, have an idea to build a refrigerated box into the table to keep the beer cold. At the time of writing this is not complete. A massive aft beam defines the back edge of the cockpit.

Cabin Top

I know this is not a cockpit but could not think where else to put this. We built the cabin top from PolyCore 25mm sheathed with 400gm Biax on either side. Temporary framework was errected and the cabin top constructed over this. The external surface was then glassed with a layer of 600gm Biax and internally the joins taped. The intension was to constuct the lid and lift it down onto the floor and finish it there - but once it was built I realised what a massive construction it was and it was really in the too hard basket. So I lined the internal surface with 4mm marine ply spaced off the inside surface with 50mm strips of DuFlex, this had a great effect of stiffening the roof to a point where we were happy to walk on it. Further stiffening was performed by building a couple of external stringers. Sweet we need somewhere to stand in order to hand the 100 sq m mailsail.