Schooner Jakatan

These photos are of the finished interior. They were taken by Neil Rabinowitz, a professional photographer, for a story about Jakatan in Cruising World magazine. The wide angle lens he used makes everything look bigger than it is and adds some distortion, but they are beautiful shots. Some of the sailing shots on the next page are also from Neil. If it looks good assume it's Neil's photo.

To the left is the forward stateroom looking aft. We put a real mattress on this bed. The mattress has a hinge making it easy to change sheets and get at storage under the foot end.

Below is the dresser to starboard. Partially visible to left is the door to the large hanging locker. There are two Lewmar hatches inside the hanging locker which provide access to the chain locker.

The left photo shows the shower from the head and right photo shows the head from the shower. Each room has a grate and pan on the floor. Both are emptied by the shower sump pump. There is a sill between the two rooms so if you hang a curtain, the head area remains dry while showering.

I put a pan in the head because I have found that the best way to clean the toilet area is to wash it down with the shower hose.

The toilet is a Vacuflush. This is more complicated than a traditional manual toilet but far easier to use, especially for visitors. Normally the head uses fresh water which keeps it smelling nice. There is a valve that switches it to salt water when conserving water.

The galley is traditional in design. It is wide enough for two to work back to back but it doesn't have a good way to brace yourself if the boat is heeled.

The stove is gimbaled. Behind it (not visible) is a slide up counter that covers the stove. This provides more counter space when you are not cooking on top of the stove.

The forward counter top narrows near the main mast. This created a corner cabinet that turns out to be very useful. Above it is a wooden post that goes to the ceiling. This is an essential hand grab but also structurally important. Because the running rigging is led to the cockpit, the blocks at the base of the mast create a large upward force. Inside the wooden post is a steel rod that transfers this force to the keel.

There is a foot pump to the right of the sinks. An offshore boat would have this connected to salt water but we use it just as a way to reduce fresh water usage.

Here is the navigation area. I discussed the bench seat on the interior design page. The counter in front of the nav table is interesting. Bob Perry originally suggested making this a hanging locker. On an offshore boat that probably would make sense, but in San Francisco, our predominant sailing area, we don't get rained on. I thought a hanging locker would make the cabin feel smaller. So we built a countertop-height cabinet. On the delivery to San Francisco we found this counter was the perfect place to leave a laptop computer. You can see and control it from the bench but it leaves the table free for charts and log. The chart plotter is angled and can be seen from the cockpit.

Behind the cabinet door under the counter are two pull out drawers and a long shelf for storing charts.

The remaining photos are pretty self explanatory. Just remember, the boat isn't as big as it looks through a wide angle lens.

A couple of final comments, I was worried that the bench seat might block the aisleway but you can see from the photo that it doesn't. So we leave it there most of the time. You can also see a port in the hull behind the table. There is a matching one on the starboard side of the boat. I noticed that many boats have hull ports these days and so I asked Perry about them. I was afraid it wouldn't look good on a schooner. He assured me it wouldn't be noticed from the outside, and he was right. We love them. They let you see outside from a sitting position and they let in more light. I have yet to get these ports under water.