Fixing Overly Steep Ship Stairs
Ahoy!
As described in a prior blog post, the Tarhnelm has four and a half distinct floors.
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Two floors are outside, which are the back deck that is over our bedroom, and the flying bridge, which is at the very top.
The interior floors are inside of our ship's hull. Our mid-ship salon is ringed with windows. To the front of that is a V-birth, small bathroom, kitchen, plus a dinette at the half floor level. To the back is our bedroom and full-size bathroom.
Mid-ship is essentially the Tarnhelm's livingroom, the floor of which is significantly lower than our back deck. The problem is that stair depth to reach the salon are non-standard, with each step at least two times deeper than average.
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Unfortunately, we cannot make new stairs because the staircase is steep and under each landing is a storage compartment, so we had to become "stair reconstructionists."
Our first solution was to use a stair cane. Unfortunately, the cane is designed for standard stairs, and we needed twice the height to create one full landing. Phil raised the step with wood, but not only did that make the cane very heavy, the wood broke off.
By accident, I noticed that yoga blocks, which are light weight, hard foam, are the perfect height to divide each landing in half. The problem last year was how to keep them in place.
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This year, Phil anchored each block to a board. We haven't tried them out yet, but we think this will solve the problem and still let us easily traverse the stairs. We will refine the block positions as we go along and cover the boards.
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I'll show you the final solution when done.
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May the tides be with you!
First Mate, Karen Little
April 23, 2023
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