These days they make tons of things for baby’s but few people have had to design special things for baby’s on boats. In order to make our boat safe for a one year old we have had to put a little bit of extra thought into re-modelling our 2000 45′ long Robertson and Caine Leopard Catamaran. Sure catamaran’s are more spacious than mono-hull sailboats but they too are boats. Boats and baby’s don’t necessarily go well together unless a lot of extra thought goes into it. We are rightfully paranoid about our baby on our catamaran because safety is our number one concern and our 1 year old only too ready to crawl anywhere we let him… and Zakary is fast too, always trying to speed away from any two arms that are ready to snatch him up.
We spent 2 days designing and building a gate for the back of the catamaran as it had a two foot wide opening on the back. I spent about a week designing and redesigning some baby gates for inside the main salon and kitchen area to keep him from bonking his head as he tried crawling down the steep steps to the bedrooms. The reason it took me a week was because I had to take at least 8 trips to various hardware and marine stores to get hinges, screw and other things. It was a rather frustrating experience because over half of these trips were to return the wrong sized screw or item and replace it with something that would fit. Moving from a home to a boat I don’t have all of my regular tools… nor is there much space for more than a few screwdrivers, wrenches and a brand new drill from Costco.
I am happy to say however that we finally have 4 baby gates for various areas in the boat and a small raised platform in our (Mom and Dad’s) bedroom that will be converted into a bed for Zakary. We have framed it in (which will diminish our cupboard and clothing space to nothing) but still need to find some foam padding to go on top of the plywood. We also found an overpriced baby harness and tether at West Marine but ordered another two for our 4 and 9 year olds Teyauna and Eli for half the price that is manufactured by Jim Buoy.
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Our next steps to baby-proofing the boat (which really is not possibly in its entirety) will be to add a tether line from in the inside living room to the outside cockpit so that Zakary will be able to go in and out of the boat in an enclosed area with limitations so that he stays well within a certain area. When we are in the tropics we will be leaving the main cabin doors latched open so that a nice breeze can come through the boat and not get so hot. We have also added some netting the the side rails of the catamaran but are waiting on some rubber bushings to place in the holes we drilled into the aluminum toe-kick so the rope we tie it down with does not chafe and tear on the sharp edges. We have also purchased a baby sling, a small portable chair with food tray and have been thinking about buying him a baby swing that hangs in the cockpit or main salon of the boat. Yesterday after many sleepless nights my wife even purchased a miniature baby bed for him as it was very exhausting having him in our bed… not to mention the old baby bed did not fit well in any space on the boat nor did laying him on our bed which is raised four feet in the air for naps leave us feeling too easy. I have to say, he is the tyke that is taking the most work and preparation on the boat so far.