Inside Ofelia

Ofelia’s interior design is very traditional, no surprises. The boat has a flush deck which leads to a lower height below compared to a raised cabin boat. Looking inside from the cockpit there is a galley on the starboard (SB) side and a navigator’s desk on the port side. Towards the bow there is a saloon, then a short corridor with a bathroom – no bath, though – on the SB side and some cabinets on the port side. Finally there is a traditional forward cabin. Under the cockpit there are two quarter berths. Let’s have a look…

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Here is the galley in evening light. A compressor cooled fridge is between the oven and the sinks. The boat doesn’t have a hot water system, the hot water tap gives actually seawater. So far I have not found a good place for the hot water tank without greater sacrifices. The two water pumps are under the sinks. In this picture the oven is not yet gimbaled. The kettle to the left came with the boat, the other was bought in Italy in the early 90’s. It had been years unused because we got an induction oven at home. Now it is whistling happily again.

When seeing the boat the first time, I looked inside, saw this galley and decided immediately that if I don’t find any flaws in the boat, it will be ours. I knew Aino would like the galley and that would be far more important than the sailing properties of the boat… Well, Aino liked the galley and the boat sails well!

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The navigator’s desk. The drawers and the little cabinet hide a quincaillerie, a little hardware store with about everything one needs to keep an old boat going. The hole on the instrument panel door used to be for the old heater control unit. The new control unit with a thermostat is nowadays in the saloon. The whole instrument panel will be replaced soon, the raw materials are already waiting in my workshop…

The navigator sits on the port side quarter berth, but the mattress is still missing in this picture because it was an early season and the boat was not yet fully equipped. One can see a loose NMEA 2000 cable, a temporary solution for the chart plotter. At present, there is a better solution but it will not be the final one.

The position of the VHF radio, to the upper right corner of the picture, on top of the radio, is not practical at all. My plan is to move it to the left of the instrument panel, but it requires a new antenna cable – which I already have ready to be installed. I have a plan to install also an AIS transponder this year. Its assembly should be combined with the repositioning of the radio.

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The SB side quarter berth. None of us has ever slept there, and it is mainly used as a storage for all kinds of stuff, mostly related to food provisions, recyling or whatever one wants to get quickly rid of. Taking away the mattress would give a little more space, but on the other hand, it helps to keep the things better in place when sailing. I managed to destroy one of the oven knobs last summer. I tried to glue it together but it didn’t hold long. Another little detail to fix…

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The companionway and the port side quarter berth. It is clearly longer than the SB berth, but the space is much lower. It has been used occasionally by me or Saga. The biggest problem is the steering system in the stern, as it is greasy and smudges easily the bed linen or a sleeping bag.

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The stern. I’ve long been planning to construct some kind of a structure to prevent the contact with the greasy cables. At the moment my vague plan is to use the long nuts sticking out through the roof to attach a kind of a fence around the steering cables. I’ve occasionally been looking for some stainless steel mesh but the basic hardware stores have only aluminium which I don’t want to use.

The engine under the companionway is actually quite easily accessible for service. It is a Solé 29 with some 700 engine hours.

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Here is the saloon. The table can be folded down from both sides. The port side is normally folded down to offer an easy access to the bow. When the both sides are up, the table is large enough for six people to dine. The sofa on the SB side can be transformed into a double bed. During a longer sail the maximum comfortable number of people on board is probably five. More than that makes the cockpit crowded.

The water and fuel tanks are under the two beds/sofas. The table stores wine and beer. The 80 l diesel fuel tank is on the port side, the 100 l water tank on the SB side. We try to avoid drinking the tank water without boiling it, although I have been drinking it occasionally as such without unwanted consequences. The tanks are large enough for the local conditions. Both the engine and the heater use the same fuel.

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On the way to the forward cabin we go through a short corridor. There are a couple of cabinets to the port side and a small bathroom to the SB side. One cabinet door is missing in the picture. It was broken but is now fixed again. Because the bathroom height is already low, it is easier to sit on a bench on top of the toilet bowl while brushing teeth or hair for instance. The bench can easily be lifted when using the toilet. I reconstructed the septic system totally in 2018 to meet the Finnish requirements.

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Finally, a traditional forward cabin with long enough berths. The port side berth is narrower than the SB berth; therefore it is necessary to have a typical triangular cushion in the middle with a piece of plywood under it. We call the triangular cushion freddie, because our friends’ dog, Freddie, uses it as his place when Saga takes care of him at Porvoo during the wintertime. The rectangular mattress is for the saloon double bed. It is normally hidden behind the back of the SB saloon sofa.

The forward cabin hides a 130 litre septic tank, the spinnaker and some other stuff, which are not frequently used.

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How does this all work in practice? Just fine!

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