moving things around

Made a few adjustments on the packing chart this morning.   This is for cruises when there are two of us on the boat.  This chart is a couple of years old and a few items have moved here or there but it is really pretty accurate as far as weight distribution.

With two of us on board, plus all the food and gear, there is a lot of additional weight, particularly up forward.  And up forward, as you see from this photo of Bruce on Spartina leaving out of Engelhard, is where it is often very comfortable to sit.  So I've been wanting to shift a little weight aft to make sure we maintain a good balance on the boat.  

I've marked in red things that could probably move aft and be stored in the four compartments under the cockpit seats.  These storage areas are very much under utilized, on a typical cruise we use 50% or less of the space in there.  We'll look at moving the tool kit, spare anchor and chain for their usual storage spaces below the bunk flat to the very aft compartments under the seats.  And we can also move some of our food - most likely the fruit cups - to the forward compartments under the seats.  That fruit I consider to be one of our luxury items on the boat - not in the sense of cost but in the matter of weight.  A few dozen fruit cups, "fruit in heavy syrup" as the package says, are in fact a fair amount of weight.  So why not move them aft a little bit?  

The amount of weight isn't the issue, Spartina can handle that just fine.  It is the distribution of the weight I'm looking at and I think this will make things a little more comfortable.

steve