With the sole down, I actually got into the boat for the first time, and I realized a couple of things:
- the cockpit was very long. Very long.
- there was no good place to store an anchor on this boat.
With tiller based boats, one of the common setups you see is some kind of storage solution strapped or buckled down underneath the swing of the tiller in the cockpit, since that space isn’t really usable otherwise. I was also thinking about where I’d store my anchor, as it would have to be back aft somewhere (no going forward on a scamp while it’s afloat).
The wisdom, as far as I can tell, among scamp owners is that anchors get stashed in buckets kept in the forward cubby, and lazarettes are pretty popular for under tiller storage.
I decided I’d build myself a wet locker lazarette and keep my anchor and chain there, out of the way.
Buy the anchor #
So since I was building this freehand, first thing first was to buy the anchor and size the locker to fit.
I settled on a Mantus galvanized hook anchor (I bought this one thinking I’d keep it taken apart, before I realized that’s not really a viable option). I’m glad I bought it before starting to size the locker.
Originally I bought a small Rocna, but the problem shown in the second picture above was much more pronounced - the Rocna just wouldn’t fit if I built the top of the lazarette at roughly the same height as the bench tops.
But the above will work. With a locking top (which I’d want anyway, since there’s a heavy anchor & chain in there - don’t want that to spill out in a capsize!) it just barely pushes the end of the anchor down, the other side pivots up, and the whole thing fits underneath the level of the seat tops. Perfect.
The seat back #
For the forward edge of the lazarette I decided that this was going to turn into a seat back. Sitting on the bottom of the cockpit, tiller pushed to one side, leaning back against the front of the lazarette, feet in the footwell. So I had to determine what a comfortable angle for the seat back should be.
Once I found a comfortable angle by sitting on the stool with the back at various different angles, I then transferred that to cleats that I glued into the cockpit.
Clamping cleats in at the comfortable angle
Then, when cutting the seat back out, the long edges will be cut using a bevel with this same angle to make sure they sit flat against the sole of the boat as well as the lazarette top.
Setting the table saw bevel angle
Cleats #
Finally, I needed to cut some cleats to fit along the transom and on the front edge of both the port and starboard seats to support what will become the flip up top of the lazarette. These I had to cut piecemeal in order to make sure that they wouldn’t interfere with the fit of the hatch covers in each seat.
All the cleats glued in
I made the cleats out of a 2x4 I had sitting around, and I didn’t cut it down at all (indeed I even added another cross piece made out of oak) as I figured the lazarette seat top needed to be quite strong to hold the anchor in as well as holding me out when I step on getting in & out of the boat. I probably overbuilt it.
I also could have just used a single 2x4 across the entire width of the transom, but I didn’t think my entire plan through from the beginning so I started with two cleats in either corner of the lazarette, and then wound up adding the cleat between them all along the transom. Oh well!
