Bookshelves

When cruising long distances, there is a a lot of opportunity to read. This means carrying books. Add to that the pilot book, guide books, sight reduction tables, almanacs, list of lights, tide tables, etc and it becomes obvious that the 1 meter (3-½ feet) of bookshelf space that comes with the boat is not enough. There are shelves along the hull in both the V-berth forward and the stern quarter berth, but these are too narrow even for small paper backs. This is because when they were mounted, a 25mm by 25mm stringer was placed on the top side of the shelf to fasten it to the hull. This narrows the shelf enough to make it pretty much useless.	The original bookshelf and sliding door cabinet. The shelf space is a little over ½ meter long. The cabinet is fair sized at the aft end but narrows down to only 100mm at the front. The shelf on top always has plants in the pictures and at boat shows, but I have not figured out how to keep them in place while at sea.
This is the replacement bookshelf. There is now just enough shelf space for my library.	To over come this problem, one of the small cabinets was removed from the port side, next to the existing bookshelf and a new divider and shelf put in. This doubles the amount of bookshelf space with the sacrifice on one small cupboard. The veriticle divider was brought to the edge to make for deeper, more usable shelves at the forward end.
To store the larger books, a separate bookshelf was made to fit under the table below the level of the slide out bunk. This case is large enough to hold sight reduction tables and other large format books that seem to never find a good home. Now, if I can only figure out how to keep water coming in through open port lights from running back along the ceiling and dripping on the books.	This box sits on the floor just under the folded up table. Despite the appearance, it does not get in the way of peoples feet while sitting at the table. The top slides open to provide access to the books.