Bayliner Bodega Selling feature: “The cozy dinette with easy access to the forward head, is easily converted to a queen bed for guests.”

 

You’d better believe you are a treasured guest if that “cozy dinette” has been “easily converted” to a queen bed for your use on our 1980 Bayliner Bodega.

 

I have spent the last one hour on behalf of our treasured friends, Diane and Tom, who will arrive today from southern California. This is, I would guess, their twentieth year cruising with us. That means, this is at least the twentieth year that I have:

 

Forced the dinette table off its two shapeless, stainless legs by pounding, wiggling, and cursing when at least one of the heavy legs falls to my foot. 

Scrunched on my knees on a padded bench cushion, I urged the heavy table top onto the small ledges built to hold it in place so that I can . . .

Pull seatback cushions off Velcro straps, squeeze them in a center place between the two larger sitting cushions, punch or knee into place cushion corners that scream “too tight!” and resist lying flat.

“Take that!” I say, and cushions yield. 

 

Now, for the hard part.

Now for the part I will only do for treasured guests.

Mattress pad. Not a problem. Throw it over the cushions

 

Bottom sheet . . .

Did I mention? The dinette is a bit more than one full step up from the narrow hallway where I stand working.

Bottom sheet. Toss it on. Remember that very few straight lines are found on a boat and, here in the dinette/queen bed, there are two: the hull side and the bottom, just under the electrical circuit panel. I start tucking the bottom sheet at the hallway side since non-straight requires some clever sheet stretching and body bending.

I climb onto the bed, crawl over cushions, working always to prevent my total weight from locking the sheet in place beneath me. I crawl forward and back, force tightly place cushions to lift enough for me to tuck the sheet, then re-force the cushions down . . .by now I’ve been in this cozy cabin for about 20 minutes.

I climb out, step down, retrieve top sheet, repeat what I’ve just done only, producing a pleasing “get in” zone at the pillow end.

 

Oh. Right. Find the pillows. Case them. Lay them on the forepeak bunk while I . . .

 

Place the white summer cotton blanket, tuck it, try getting off it while smoothing it, place pillows. But then, I realize the weather has changed. I need to place the eiderdown at the foot of the bed, you know, the nights  are turning cold.

 

The Eiderdown is stowed in a massive white bag in the narrow cabinet under the dinette bench accessed from the narrow hallway. I crawl in, pull it out. Dang. The duvet is separate—that would be because it was washed, folded, and stored after last year’s use. 

 

Bring the queen-sized eiderdown to the salon, throw it open, find the end tabs for securing it to the duvet. Throw open the duvet and turn it wrong-side-out because that’s the easiest way to insert the eiderdown. 

 

Wish Dave were here to help rather than he being on a lovely morning walk with Skoshi to the top of Cap Sante mountain where he can view the fog in Guemes Channel. Not that I mind.

 

But he isn’t here to see me tangled in a mountain of white cotton cloth and a pile of well-squared eiderdown. I managed to tie the two together at the corners, and then corrected matching corners and because of such efficiency, it only took me about 10 more minutes to find the top corners, tie those together, and button shut the duvet. The eiderdown got rolled, German style, and placed at the bottom of the queen bed; my being careful to place it without disturbing sheets and summer blanket. 

 

Two green foil wrapped chocolate-mint candies from Heron’s Key rest on the perfectly folded white summer blanket, ready to welcome treasured guests. They can mess it all up as much as they’d like.

Only three more morning tasks: Fill the water tank, laundromat, and grocery store. This is the truth about boating—the work done at home is done here; it’s just harder here.  (So far, so worth it.)