The Ballad Exchange

Okay, so I'm making the pilot berth my sons 'cabin' (currently the poor little bugger sleeps on the saloon sole with the dog ). I've replaced the headling in there, and am ordering some foam, the strange thing is, the measurements I took when down the boat yesterday look as the below when compared to the scale drawing.



The foam that I am about to order looks much too small. These scale drawings have been pretty good for getting measurements from, hence I am quite stumped. Anyone else had similar issues with the pilot berths?

Is too small? Pilot berth runs bulkhead to bulkhead, which on port side is something like 6'4" (193cm). Stbd side span is an inch or two shorter, IIRC, probably to fit the galley. Unless someone has added a half bulkhead coincident with the aft chainplate -- a common repair, and a standard item in (later) non-pilot-berth Ballads -- your foam length should be the same as the saloon bench seat. The scale drawings depict early-run Ballads, with full-length outboard berths and aft-facing nav stations.

I'd order some extra foam & wait to cut it until you can make a template of the space. Corrugated cardboard is pretty useful for that. And since the Ballad is perfectly slab-sided midships above the 'half-chine', you shouldn't have to bevel the outside edge of the cushion much.

The "missing" length on your boat matches where my closed locker sits between the aft lower chainplate bulkhead and the main bulkhead. I wonder what the aft lower chainplate would be attached to if this mini bulkhead was missing?

Thanks Bob, Peter. On my starboard side I have a locker, on port I do not (err, I don't THINK I do anyway) and I'm sure that the pilot berth goes all the way forward meaning I have just cocked up the measuring (screaming children in car, wife chomping at bit to get away, so its conceivable that I bodged it up when rushing).

Here are my starboard side cupboards.

http://www.albinballad.co.uk/technology ... cupboards/

The port side has always been such a mess I have never taken any photos

prjacobs wrote:The "missing" length on your boat matches where my closed locker sits between the aft lower chainplate bulkhead and the main bulkhead. I wonder what the aft lower chainplate would be attached to if this mini bulkhead was missing?

Hmm. On our Ballad, the distance between the main bulkhead and the lower aft chainplate (and putative bulkhead) is almost 24"; Mark seems to be missing about 12"-14" in his cushion dimensions. Which is in-between enuf to suggest measurement error.

Here's how the lower aft chainplates are arranged in Ballads with pilot berths and no mini bulkheads:





"Wait!" you say. "That's not a good alignment," you say. Oh well. It all sort of works in the end. We've replaced those mini-mini-bulkheads and knees with actual tabbed-in half bulkheads, similar to what you have on later (non-pilot berth) Ballads.



They are sistered to the sad little original things. And I've fabricated some flat SS chainplates 36" long to bolt thru them:



We lose the pilot berths, but we dinna have childers to stuff in them anyway.