FITTING OUT
APPUSKIDU
Making the
toilet more accessible
I can see that
this may not be of interest to real sailors who “bucket and chuck it” but for
the likes of me, one of the very best mods I have
done is to move the toilet from the starboard (Left picture) to the port side
(Right picture). This means that it can be accessed easily without having to
dismantle the starboard bunk to get at it. That is an important consideration
for me not least because of all the gear that I usually store on the starboard
bunk. It may also be of interest to lady sailors.
The toilet is
not used whilst it rests in its new tray. It is stored in the tray back to
front so that it can be easily drawn out and parked on the bunk bench (after
folding back the cushion) so that it can be used whilst sat athwartships
with one’s head to the companionway.
Readers of the
first part of “Fitting out Appuskidu” will know that I do not use a gimballed
cooker and in fact do not cook in the cabin at all. The space where the
gimballed cooker would have lived was used to store my cockpit tables with my
square camping cooker on top when not in use in the cockpit. Moving this
storage to the starboard side onto the tray that previously supported the
toilet frees up the port side for the new toilet position.
The key to
this toilet repositioning is to use a different design of tray. As the space
available and the distance between the tray supporting rails on the port side
is less than on the starboard side, a tray for the new toilet position has to made with very thin sides. I used some 2mm aluminium. As you
will see from the first picture below, the toilet is a “shoe horn” fit in the a new tray. The tray is actually narrower than the
widest part of the toilet and somewhat smaller than the old starboard side
tray.
The underside
of the tray is reinforced even though the toilet is not used whilst it is in
the tray. Note that it may be necessary to shorten some of the bolts that stick
out underneath the centreplate capping so that the top of the toilet doesn’t
catch on them when it is being slid out of the tray. In any case careful
measurements should be taken and/or offering up done before undertaking this
job as it is such a close tolerance operation it is possible that moulding
tolerances render it impossible on your boat.