Most landlubbers take for granted that making a bed consists of removing linens from the closet  (or what-have-you) and spreading them over a rectangular surface. For the salty amongst us, the chore begins the same way but quickly devolves to wrestling rectangular bedding around the odd and unaccommodating shapes that berths tend to come in.

In our case the traditional vee-berth came with the added challenge of the affectionately named Chastity Cable.  Because of this lovely piece of below decks rigging, we don’t have a need for the little wedge shaped  piece the many vee-berths have and we require either two completely independent sets of sheets and covers, or some clever way to work around the obstacle with one.

This was Victoria’s chosen project for the week. By Friday evening she had the serger out and was madly cutting up and reworking our old wool topper and cotton flannel mattress pad. By 10pm she had our sheets, comforter and comforter cover all cut and sewn half way up their length.

Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this live-aboard rite of passage was the ad-hoc sewing table that we had to engineer. If you’re familiar with our boat you’ll notice that, where our saloon used to be, there is now just fabric. We put the vee-berth cushions across the table and unto the sea-berths in order to trace and cut out the pattern for the topper. Victoria then used that to pattern all of the other bed clothes.

The result of all of this labor and smiling is a fantastic new (up-cycled) set of bedding that allows us to get a tiny bit closer in spite of the best efforts of the Chastity Cable.