Searching for Berth Comfort

[Chuteman]

Does anyone use their Salon as primary berth area?

After doing the V-berth mambo & aft berth limbo on various boats, I'm looking for a more comfortable place to sleep day after day. Yeah, I've slept in the cockpit when I could fit & it did not rain on me..........or in the salon with a lee cloth while underway.
Especially on smaller <40' boats. If you do use the salon, have you ordered special mattress, etc?

Yes. On our first boat, Petrel, a 34' Angleman, the main saloon was it. We were quite comfortable there for about 4 years. We used a Latex mattress, and I swear by them. It was really not a problem for the two of us, but the berth was still a little small. Made for cozy quarters

[Pblais]

The Gozzard 36 use the V Berth as the saloon open to the galley / dinning area. The settees pull together to convert a V shaped settee to a single queen sized berth. It's a wide open floor plan and folding panels / doors divide the V berth from the dining / galley and another divides the aft berth from the same. During the day everything is wide open and by night if it's just two people is is still open, yet can be divided as the crew count changes.

That means we can use the V Berth for easier in and out but the aft berth is a king sized berth with the low head room under the cockpit we all know of. You can leave the bed made. The V berth / saloon has to be made up and taken down (or not). It's one of the things I like about the floor plan. When open it feels like a 40 Plus ft boat where 6 people can sit and be comfortable or where 4 people can sleep privately yet still sit 6 for dinner in the cockpit.

I think the problem with many boats is they chop up the space to make multiple heads and private quarters and thus you get nothing else without being 55 ft long.

[S/V Elusive]

Gosh Kai - I just KNEW you were going to mention leaks as a function of comfort. But, it didn't appear. : x

[Chuteman]

Kai - Cozy is fine if comfortable & I do not have to try out for the olympic gymnastic team to enter the berth.

Pblais - I found a layout of what You describe online......interesting & creative stuff...............sounds like you rest just fine.

Thanks .....

[Talbot]

Originally Posted by Chuteman

Does anyone use their Salon as primary berth area?

After doing the V-berth mambo & aft berth limbo on various boats, I'm looking for a more comfortable place to sleep day after day. Yeah, I've slept in the cockpit when I could fit & it did not rain on me..........or in the salon with a lee cloth while underway.
Especially on smaller <40' boats. If you do use the salon, have you ordered special mattress, etc?

I dont really see the problem, cause even on my 29 ft boat, the main sleeping cabin has a standard 6ft 3" x 4ft 6" double bunk. The saloon has a stanby double bed, and there are two other cabins with single beds. surely you must have more room on a bigger boat????

BTW I use an additional 2" of memory foam to improve the comfort on the bed.

[Sandero]

Our Contest 36s has an aft cabin berth which one can use fore and aft of athwart ship. There's not much headroom except in the corner "entry" and certainly enough to sit up and read in either the fore and aft or athwart ship orientations.

Wife would like a real cabin / stateroom type deal, but our aft cabin is fine... except that one person is kinda landlocked.

We sleep athwart ship for numerous reasons... and can close the door and need not worry about privacy or bed clothes etc.

We don't spend lots of time sleeping and so the most important thing about sleeping is the comfort of the mattress (ours is super)... and things like ventilation and privacy (both great for our aft cabin)... and the ability to block out light too.

In the end I am OK with the arrangement because I prefer the aft cockpit and sailing on board as opposed to sleeping.

Sleeping on top of a diesel and next to an autopilot is not for a light sleeper! But at a quiet anchorage our aft cabin works out fine. We have added a Hella fan, outlets for the Espar heating and it has upgraded lighting and its own AM/FM cassette player / alarm. All in all it's pretty cosy... and quite comfy. Get the best foam for sleeping!

The mattress is in 3 sections and this allows for lee boards as well. although I usually sleep in the main cabin on passage and use the aft for stowage.

[John Drake]

The Hood 38 has a very large vee berth and large overhead hatch for ventilation. These are important factors in being comfortable but not really as important as the mattress itself.

I have found two things that help:

1. Memory foam mattresses are really very nice. I do not have one but have compensated by have a canvas maker make me a custom mattress of two kinds of mattress foam. I have 4 inches of medium density foam topped with 2 inches of low density foam. It conforms nicely to my body and I find it very comfy. It also had the virture of costing just $300.

2. Matress pieces. I have also found that having a single section of mattress is also very helpful...though hard to do. Sleeping in between mattress sections is annoying. One long piece, regardless of size is most preffered. That may be why you are sleeping in the main cabin perhaps.

And there are times aboard when sleeping in the main cabin is simply the best spot because of the motion of the boat or noise (water bashing against the bow, engine noise or wave slap in the aft cabin).

No worries...its your boat....sleep anywhere you want ...that is how I see it.

Hope this helps.

John
s/v Invictus
lying FL keys

[Chuteman]

Harbor hopping or island hopping for a couple a weeks are bearable but looking to spend longer time on board has me thinking about better ways.

"The Problem" = the V-berth requires the lift legs spin to the right (my preferred mambo move) to position my feet in the V. Alone it's simple but tiresome with a lovely in place gotta be careful not to disturb her beauty sleep......plus headroom is still a concern. The aft cabin usually has an even more severe headroom challenge (limbo) of varying degrees plus the same entry moves.........but it does offer a rectangle ..tradeoff to landlock the beauty sleeper.

Common Theme - Better mattress........and the one piece sounds even better no matter where you sleep.......just gotta store the larger main saloon piece when you rise & shine from all that shuteye.

Sleep - may never match land conditions but minimizing fatigue helps the adventure fun & overall safety.

Thanks for ideas & comments

Chuteman, Our boat had the equivalant of a twin size matteress in the main saloon. I am a pretty big guy, so it was a bit tight, but liveable. At first, we looked at alternatives such as the V-berth, but there was no way to make it a double. We tried to make the quarter berth comfortable for two, but it felt like a coffin. The main saloon was the best option, and we got used to it quickly. Our Challenger 40 has an aft cabin, and we do really like the seperate area. I would not select boat based on having a seperate cabin or not. In fact, our trimaran has all berths located in the main saloon over the wings.

[swagman]

We've only just added wooden sprung wooden slats under our regular foam matteress and the difference is really noticable.
Its one of those 'why didn't I do this before now' type experiences and I'd strongly recommend this to anyone who is not 100% happy with an existing mattress (before going to the expense of trying to replace it with different foam etc).
JOHN

[NoTies]

Our 30' has a reasonable sized 1/4 berth but no good for a double and the vee berth is really only a single so we knew we would have to compromise somewhere. What we came up with is a system of 4 lengths of 5/8" ply 15" X 75" with some 3" X 1" boards & pegs to hold it all together. On top we have a 4" self inflating mattress (just undo the bungs and let it loft up). The boards stow under the settee squabs and the mattress rolls into about 8" X 60" and stows in the vee berth or quarter berth. It takes about 7 minutes (or one cigarette in the cockpit) to assemble and let the mattress loft up and about 5 minutes (or brewing time for coffee) to disassemble. Disadvantage is that it is difficult for 1 person to do by themselves. We have been very comfortable and been living like this for 11 months now with no problems. Head room is great and the saloon handholds have proven very useful ;-)

[Chuteman]

KN - I started out looking at cabins but a buddy pointed me in the right direction now trying to understand how to make saloon as comfortable as possible.

SM - How many slats did you add?............can you describe them further?

PD - Sounds fancy............you deflate the mattress every day? what mechanism is used to self inflate?

Thanks for comments, ideas & examples!

[swagman]

Hi Chuteman,
The slatted base we laid onto the bunk base and below the foam mattress was a commecially produced pack. Sorry can't recall name but the slats are laminated and varnished pine ply, maybe 3 inches by 1/8th which run across the bunk, and spaced by 3 inches also.
They were spaced equally by two rubber webbing straps down each side - and in the middle of each slat and on each end, one pushes on rubber feet to hold the whole thing some 3/4 inch above the bunk top.
One can improve firmness by adding more feet - or make it springier by using less.
Hope my explanation is clear enough if you fancy making them yourself - but as I suspect the whole lot was made in China somewhere - another site user may be able to direct you to the US source.
Cheers
JOHN

[NoTies]

Not sure what the product name elsewhere in the world is but in NZ the most common name is "Thermarest" although they don't make one as thick as ours. We brought an Australian model through the "Kathmandu" chain of stores. They are comprised of open cell foam with a memory and to inflate you just unroll it and undo 4 bungs and leave it for about 5 minutes as it lofts up, put the bungs back in and you're good to go, no pump needed. To deflate we just undo the bungs and roll it up, squeezing out the air as we go and then put the bungs back in. We saw a system recently that utilised a self inflating mattress combined with a traditional air matress that was 30" thick!!! Try googling "self inflating mattress"