Plan B

Oh dear. We went out to the boat yesterday armed with sofa bed measurements and now realise that the sofas we had been looking at are too deep from front to back. When in place the sofa would take up half of the available width of the saloon and make it quite diffilcult to get past from the galley to the bathroom etc. Here Kath demonstrates how far out it would reach.

We have seen plenty of boats with such a problem, but its not one we want to inflict on ourselves or Herbie. Was our trip to Kinver in vain? No, because we avoided a costly mistake and anyway we had a good day out.

The principal problem we still want to overcome is the use of the futon mattress. It is big, surprisingly heavy to manoeuvre and prone to sagging at the back when in sofa mode. Therefore plan B will be to replace it with three separate good quality foam cushions made to measure and suitably interlinked to quickly convert into a mattress. We calculate we can do this without compromising floor space like the sofa would. We'll also make a couple of small adaptations to our existing extending bed frame to make it easier to put up and down.

Here is the frame (built by Herbie's previous owner Roy), in sofa mode,

and in bed mode.

We'll be glad too to keep the existing underbed storage.