Recidivist Interior

Here are some shots of Recidivist’s interior, our sole and only refuge from the elements (and each other) more than a thousand miles from land:

Starting at the pointy end of the boat we have the forepeak

Recidivist’s forepeak stores sails, lines, a spinnaker pole, our foul weather gear and…

… the toilet. There’s no magic here, it’s a puka through the hull, requires manual pumping (read: flushing) and can plug. To minimize any incidents Ken has a strict rule on the boat: if it doesn’t come out of you it’s not going in the toilet. This means you collect your tissue paper, walk it out and toss it over to bio-degrade. Luckily we have hand sanitizer and wetnaps.

The main area houses two settees, pipe-berths above each settee, the sink, cooler, stove, and companionway. The blue things you see hanging from the ceiling are lifevests and tethers.

One of the settees is used to store gear. Above is a shot of our kitchen cabinet/pantry. All we have is a couple of plastic bowls, mugs, utensils, aluminum foil, a pot, Gatorade mix (to help with the water), soy sauce (in case we catch any fish), coffee, coffee creamer, and two bottles of Sriracha. Yeah, that’s right, Sriracha. Apparently, every single one of Ken’s dryfreeze meals is flavor Sriracha.

The kitchen consists of three propane burners. We use two a day to heat water for coffee and dry freeze food. The jig you see here tilts so it remains upright. This is critical because it allows you to cook while the boat is heeled over.

On either side of the companion way are seats with cubbies in the seat backs. The starboard side is the navigator chair as the laptop and instruments are set up on that side. Cubbies on the starboard side are designed for Larry, Ken, medical items, and miscellaneous. The port side has been dubbed ‘the librarian’s chair and its’ cubbies are designed for Sean, Roscoe, Calvin, and another miscellaneous.

Something interesting about Recidivist is that she can be configured to have the navigator chair on the port or starboard side. The reason why we have it set up for the starboard side is that the Pacific Cup race is heavily favored towards starboard tack. Placing the navigator seat on the starboard side allows us to stack the navigator’s weight and instruments onto the windward side of the boat. Doing this enhances the boats performance.

Moving aft we have two more pipe berths on either side, laundry baskets with our food (mostly dry freeze, some jerkey, energy bars and mandarin oranges), the emergency rudder, a second spinnaker pole, the gas tank and achors (not visible)

While the boat is heeled, we’ll be sleeping mostly on the starboard side, hot bunking with the relieving man on watch. Once we reach the trade winds and the wind moves aft the boat will flatten out and we’ll start using the port berths as well. This initial stage can last as long as 2/3rds of the race but will hopefully not last more than a third of the race.

More on that later.