Page updated: 10 November 2008
People are always customising their boats. This page describes two cockpit adaptations with a commentary from the web master. One provides a large locker and the other is a mystery! If you can provide more examples or wish to add your comments about these adaptations, please use the Forum.
Hawk-eye
Hawk-eye has an interesting starboard locker. It is top-opening and without the conventional internal moulding of the typical Reedcraft-built boat. This arrangement gives it a much greater capacity than the normal type.
While the ease of access to the locker, and its greater capacity, will be welcomed by many, the danger must be that it will not have the self-draining properties of the conventional side access locker that is the norm on SeaHawks.
It is likely that had boat's builders had decided to fit top hinged lockers they would have fitted a liner of some kind. Keeping the base of the locker above the level of the cockpit floor would have allowed a drain hole to be provided from the locker into the cockpit. Although this clearly would clearly reduce the capacity of the locker, it would ensure that the locker never filled with water, and perhaps the bilges too.
Having said that, it is known that Reedcraft did supply Jemima (#232) with a lidded starboard locker and cut out most of the aft side of the liner. This was to allow the owner to store his engine in that locker with the propeller shaft passing through the hole.
Chipsnip
The owner of Chipsnip has asked for an explanation of why his recently acquired boat should have the hatch, seen in these pictures, sited in the centre of the cockpit floor. He says that the hatch does not line up with any hull mounted fitting.
One suggestion made by another owner was that a previous owner added a main sheet fitting that connected to this point. (There are two boats based at Hickling, Norfolk, (See Lady Nora and L888 in the Gallery Section of the site) that have fittings for this purpose, though of radically different design to that which might have been fitted to Chipsnip.)
Another was that it might have been the site of a socket for the leg of a Desmo table.
In the end the owner wrote saying, "I think it was put there just to provide easy access to the void underneath the cockpit sole. It certainly came in useful when I was installing the sender for the echo sounder and also if you need to route a pipe for a bilge pump which mine already had."