Hi D'Arcy,

...and I would have happily traded it for an autopilot on this trip, that's for sure... (grin)

Sure, it was nice to be warm and dry inside while motoring down the ICW south of St. Augustine on a wild day that saw a major frontal passage with thunderstorms and horizontal rain, I didn't envy bernie that day... But the degree to which these things impede visibility and make sailhandling, and even docking extremely difficult, I'd certainly never have one on a boat of my own... On a center cockpit design, that's a bit different, but on an aft cockpit, the challenge of simply getting a stern line on the aft cleat boggles the mind. And, this enclosure is really gonna wreak havoc with the Monitor air vane once the wind comes forward of a close reach...

The extent to which watchkeeping at night is impeded, especially aft, is a bit spooky - you really have to go out on deck to have a look around if you think you might see something through the fun-house Eisenglass and screening aft... When the eisenglass and mosquito screening got plastered together with rain, even in daylight running down the ditch, I may as well have had a sheet of plywood erected behind the cockpit, I was completely blind... Every powerboat that overtook us was a complete surprise, never saw them coming until they were right on top of us... Can't even begin to imagine what it would be like at night...

Coming into Lake Worth Inlet at night, then finding our way back up the ICW and private channel into Old Port Cove was a bit of an adventure, very difficult to use a handheld searchlight out from under the damn thing... It was just starting to drizzle, if it was raining any harder, we definitely would have had to dismantle it to gain some measure of visibility... And, if we had put any salt spray on it whatsoever on the ride down outside from Ft. Pierce, fuggedaboudit - I would have had to anchor up behind Palm Beach, and wait until daylight to run the last few miles up to OPC...

So, if all you do is motor in daylight hours, and don't care at all what they do to your boat's appearance, I suppose they're wonderful... As I said, it's easy to see why they've become so popular... (grin)

best regards,

Jon