Sacrilege?

Sailing on a beautiful summer's day, with the warm wind blowing through the cockpit...there is nothing on earth as wonderful.

Sailing on a wintery day, with ice-cold rain and sea spray running through your hair, down your back and into the waistband of your shorts...not so good.

I am also faced with the reality that my young family need to be protected from the extreme NZ sun, as we sit pretty much directly under "that hole in the ozone" that we have all known about for years.

As a result, I have been investigating the installation of a bimini to compliment my dodger.

But...will a bimini protect me from a cold wind off the beam?  Will a bimini allow me to mount my instruments overhead and allow me to mount solar panels on top?  I believe from my research that the answer is no.

So then some sort of hardtop is required.  There are certainly a few examples of hard-top bimini installations out there, most of them being the products of Genco Marine.

I very much like what was done here:

Unfortunately, the cost of importing something as unweildy as this from Canada to New Zealand makes it a bit of a non-starter.

I began to wonder if I couldn't come up with a home-grown solution.  I have been playing with some photographs to come up with a possible concept.

I have always admired the lines of the Fisher motorsailers, with their enclosed wheelhouses:

I try to imagine that wheelhouse extending back to the stern, as would be required on a Nonsuch. 

I have also found inspiration in the design of the Chesapeake Marine Design Oysta 28:

There is a Nonsuch owner out there who has built this timber dodger on his boat:



Thank you to the owner in advance...



...and I've been playing with those lines, brought back to the stern:



A bodge-job with Microsoft Paint, and way too long...but you get the idea. The entire thing could be white, instead of varnished timber, for a very contemporary-look



Now imagine this overall profile, but with the forward sloping forward section or "Portugese Bridge".  There are clearly issues of access and sight lines, which could be resolved before final dimensions are set, but in concept, imagine having a warm dry cockpit with windows that could be opened in the summer, a couple of hatches on the roof, solar panels, and fitting on the ceiling for a remote VHF, plotter and instruments?

I'm actually convinced that the cockpit could then be far more useable year round, be it in the blinding sun or the cold and wet.  It would add tremendous safety for the kids as well.

Of course you either love it or absolutely hate it, and it would be criminal to ruin the lines of the Nonsuch, but perhaps if the wheelhouse roof curvature matched that of the cabin exactly, it might actually really work?