Stairway to......

[Cee Kat Crew]

Hi all,

We purchased our 26M last November 2019.
The crew will consist of my wife and I and our 3, eight year old daughters.
I found it a bit of a climb to access the boat in the driveway via the transom or by ladder. With that in mind, I was not looking forward to provisioning the boat for a sail with provisions for 5 and luggage for 4.
So we decided to build a set of stairs.
The stairs had to be compact and sturdy enough to be able to slide out of the way when moving the boat.
This is what we came up with:

First, I determined that the landing of the stairs should be 5 feet high.

Then, I went on line and got actual dimensions of common lumber to help with the design process.




Then I found a great stair calculator on line and came up with stairs that would be a good fit.





Then, I sketched some plans and made a material list.








Some pictures of the building process.
The material list was pretty close. I ended up having two 8 foot 2X4s left over.








Now, 2 coats of stain. They had a sale on a gallon of stain, so I bought that.
Surprisingly, we ended up using ⅔ of it.






The finished project. The total cost of materials including paint was about $250 CAN.

[Jimmyt]

Very nice job! That will definitely make access easier.

[Russ]

Excellent work. Very professional looking and will certainly make boarding much easier.

[Bobsquatch]

Pssshh, to lazy to build an elevator? Not even an escalator? Way to phone it in man...

Great job! That thing will pay for all your efforts to build it in the first season.

[Todd]

That will make it so much easier. I didn't see an order form link?!

[BOAT]

That set of stairs is really well engineered. Anything you could buy from a store would be a lot flimsier. That one in the picture looks stronger than the ones they sell online for more money. It also looks light enough to drag around the boat so it can be used for cleaning and maintenance.

It's that mast crutch that caught my eye - Man! I really want to raise the angle of my mast crutch also. It would make raising the mast a lot easier and also get me a place higher up for instrument sensors and solar and other "stuff". I am just not sure how to engineer a crutch that high because the little tubes on the boat where they slide in seem so small to me I am afraid it will bend or something the further out I go?

I need yet again some calculations from Tom in regards to how much weight that mast can impact on the crutch during highway travel - will I crash the mast when I hit a bump?

Maybe BWY will make a mast crutch we can buy that is taller than the original - that sure would be nice.

Otherwise i will need instructions from John the Highlander to teach me how to bend that pipe.

[Jimmyt]

I noticed that also. Did you see where the spreaders were in relation to the lifelines? Hmmmm.

[BOAT]

I noticed that also. Did you see where the spreaders were in relation to the lifelines? Hmmmm.

Yeah, much better - keeps the spreaders from scratching the cabin top for one thing and also makes the spreaders clear the stanchions when rolling the mast. A LOT of good reasons to do this mod including the need by some to clear a dodger on the cabin top.

[Jimmyt]

Would that be a hard dodger? . I'm hoping someone will do one soon. I really like your sketch BOAT.

The raised support won't go through my garage door. Otherwise I'd be tube shopping.

Those stairs are awesome. Everytime I get in my boat, I'm going to have stair envy...

[Russ]

The raised support won't go through my garage door. Otherwise I'd be tube shopping.

Those stairs are awesome. Everytime I get in my boat, I'm going to have stair envy...

I have garage envy. You have your boat in your garage. I contemplated building a garage to house the boat, but I can pay to store the boat for decades under a shed roof at the storage lot for less than the cost to build one.

[Jimmyt]

The raised support won't go through my garage door. Otherwise I'd be tube shopping.

Those stairs are awesome. Everytime I get in my boat, I'm going to have stair envy...

I have garage envy. You have your boat in your garage. I contemplated building a garage to house the boat, but I can pay to store the boat for decades under a shed roof at the storage lot for less than the cost to build one.

I got the garage for the price of the slab, due to the foundation and lot combination. Sometimes a good deal on a lot is the gift that keeps on taking...

[Bill at BOATS 4 SAIL]

These stairs reminded me of some that I built years ago for an indoor boat show in Milwaukee. I built them to the exact specs that they sent me. The day before the show started, a city of Milwaukee inspector said that I did not have a handrail, which was not listed in the specs. Then I went around to the other boat dealers, and measured their steps. None of them met specs. most being the plastic type that you occasionally see next to a boat in a slip. So, the first day of the show, I brought an oar along for a handrail. The inspector showed up and said that my stairs did not meet specs. I installed the oar/handrail and said "why don't you go and measure boat dealers A, B, C, D, E, etc. They were all power boat dealers. I had the only sailboat in the show.The show organizer was with him and he said "Why make it harder on the other guys?. I said "BS, my stairs are the only ones in the show that do meet specs".
I let Terry L. Searfoss, the author of The Two Burner Gourmet, use part of my space. He gave me an autographed copy of his book, with a very nice personal note inside.
I sold one Mac 26 to a guy that hadn't even seen my boat. I had left brochures on the trailer fender, and he had picked one up as he walked by. When he got home, his wife asked him about it, and he admitted that he hadn't even seen it. They came out to my TEMPORARY WORLD HEADQUARTERS and bought a Mac 26.
I was contacted the next year about doing the show and I said "NO", and I told him why.

[Jimmyt]

These stairs reminded me of some that I built years ago for an indoor boat show in Milwaukee. I built them to the exact specs that they sent me. The day before the show started, a city of Milwaukee inspector said that I did not have a handrail, which was not listed in the specs. Then I went around to the other boat dealers, and measured their steps. None of them met specs. most being the plastic type that you occasionally see next to a boat in a slip.

You did something different. Inspectors are typically skeptical of the new and/or different. They will occasionally pass things if they know the contractor, or if it's a production item (such as your powerboat neighbor's stairs); without really giving it a hard go-over. This is certainly not true of all inspectors, just something I've seen in my area in the city inspection of residential and commercial construction. It is always frustrating when you run into it. My father in law was an electrician, and he was one of the best. He would occasionally run into an inspector that would drive him nuts. I've found that if you show them respect and try to get them involved in helping you "meet their requirements", you get a lot further than fighting with them. Learned that from my FIL.

My most recent issue was due to the city code adoption being several versions of the gas code behind the current international version. Following the outdated code would have resulted in considerable additional expense, in time and materials. Functionally, it would not have performed as well either. After a lot of respectful discussion, and allowing them time to look at the situation, without telling them how much they were holding me up, they did grant me a waiver to use the current code version.

Again, my experience in my location. May be different elsewhere. Not bad folks typically. Sometimes a bit inflexible, arbitrary, and capricious...

At least you got a sale out of it!

[NiceAft]

Bill,

I just looked up “TheTwo Burner Gourmet” on e-bay. The asking price for an autographed paperback copy is $48.98 ....Ka-Ching.!

[Bill at BOATS 4 SAIL]

The desk that I used in my TEMPORARY WORLD HEADQUARTERS was the front deck of an old used home-built plywood cabin cruiser that I bought on Easter Sunday of 1977 for $100. I used it for years on the small lake that I live on until I became a MacGregor dealer. So, I cut the front deck off and used it as a desk in my office. I also had a lot of nautical memorabilia, such as the water buffalo horns that I shipped from Nam, etc.