The compartment sequence

What style of stern would the boat have? A traditional stern really only provided room for the person steering, but does give limited shelter during inclement weather.  Coming from a warm dry climate we knew we’d suffer from the weather! All our previous experience has been on hire boats which had cruiser sterns. It has the advantage of providing room for more than one person steering - and we wanted to be together. But the area would be very exposed during inclement weather. A semi-traditional stern has the advantages of a cruiser and also provides some protection from the weather. So we opted for a semi-traditional stern. The next step was to consider the sequence of the internal compartments. The boat would have a main bedroom, bathroom, galley (kitchen) and saloon (lounge room). We anticipate family and friends will join us during our time aboard so we need to consider that requirement; albeit as a secondary consideration. If necessary they can sleep on the saloon floor. We also recognised that during winter and inclement weather it would be an advantage if we had an area where we transition from wet outdoor to dry indoor clothing. This would avoid bringing wet clothing and footwear into the boat living compartment. We consider it unlikely family and friends will visit during winter so this space will have a dual purpose as a changing area and spare bedroom. Now we needed to decide on the sequence of the compartments. We were used to our hire boats having a conventional layout with the saloon in the bow, followed by the galley, bathroom and bedroom. Jan had already identified this layout had previously resulted in the bedding getting wet when entering the boat from the cruiser stern. The obvious solution was to place the wet locker/spare bedroom at the stern. We also identified that most of the time we would be exiting and entering the boat from the stern. Having the saloon at the bow would result in having to walk through the entire boat to get to the saloon. The compartment that would be used the least during the day was the main bedroom. Logically that should be the forward compartment. The next least used compartment is the bathroom. We could either place it in front of the wet locker or behind the main bedroom. In either position it would be accessible to the main cabin and any visitors. As it was likely to be a ‘walk through’ compartment we decided to place it behind the main bedroom and saloon. This meant the obvious place for the galley was immediately in front of the wet locker with the saloon in the middle of the boat. So our planned layout from the bow would be: main bedroom, bathroom, saloon, galley, wet locker.