dinette

[Gene Neill]

Hi Vega community,
I proudly introduce myself as the (propably) "youngest" Vega owner:
bought # 1992 last week!! I think you all will understand, how happy
we (my wife and me) are.
As you can imagine, many questions and ideas are circling in my head
right now.
Let me introduce one of them to the newsgroup:
We will sail our Vega exclusively as a couple, therefore I`m thinking
of converting one of the settees in the cabin into a double seated
(face-to-face) dinette. The reasons: We would gain a nice chart
table, the aisle would remain free and we would not "live in the
cellar", sitting at the table would allow us to look out of the
window.
The questions I have:
Is there anybody with similar ideas or did anybody do that already?
Are the wooden parts (mainly the vertical board with the two
openings) of the settee constructive elements to support the bulk
head?
Eager to hear any suggestions or to learn from your experiences (or
failures)!
Mast und Schotbruch (the german way sailors greet each other)
Lueder

 

[reefmagnet]

Hello, Lueder,

My Vega (1240) had the part settee converted to a dinette such as you
describe--some woodworker did it for the former owner, and it matches
the original wood so well that I would never have guessed it wasn't
built that way originally. It is truly wonderful to have a permanent
table, and when 4 of us cruise together, as we did for 10 days this
summer, one just sleeps on the cabin sole using the cockpit cushions.

I've uploaded two photos that show our settee to the Albin group site at
Yahoo ("our interior" 1 and 2). Sorry I'm not an expert on construction
issues, but I can tell you that it's a great idea!
Good luck.
Tomlueder.heidemann@... wrote:

 

[reefmagnet]

Lueder,
Answers are interspersed below:

lueder.heidemann@... wrote:

 

[reefmagnet]

Welcome Aboard Lueder!

I think that converting the port side settee to a dinette is a good
idea. I saw some some photos a couple of years ago on the VAGB web
site of a boat with such a conversion and decided to make a similar
modification to Lealea. I will atempt to upload the photos to the
files section so you can compare them with the ones of Tom's boat.
You will see that they have taken a slightly different approach.
While I liked the idea, I wanted something a little different. I had
a lot of fun designing the new furniture for Lealea. My challenge
was primarily that I have no workshop since I live on the boat.
Everything had to be done with hand tools on the dock or in the cabin
but that proved to be not too much of a problem at all though, like
most of my projects, it is still not quite finished.

The original interior woodwork in the Vega is of Sapele, both solid
and plywood veneer. Sapele, which is also sometimes called "African
Mahogany" surprisingly, turned out to be readily available here in
Hawaii but Honduras Mahogany is also a good match and I have used
some for trim pieces. I'll try to take some pictures of my project
and post them here if I can get my wife to bring the camera home from
work.

Aloha,

Chuck Rose
SV Lealea, V1860
Honolulu