If you have the dog watch in the Newport to Ensenada race, do you want to have to
stand up and drive the boat for those four hours? Heck yea! Otherwise you'll
fall asleep at the wheel and run aground on the Coronado Islands in the middle
of the night. For all those other times, it is nice to have a place to sit when
at the helm. That's when a skipper seat comes in handy.
I
have seen the skipper seats from four 323s and each one of them is different. Of
all the configurations I've seen, there are things I like about the one on Ping,
and things I'd like to improve. The main shortfall in Ping's configuration is
that the skipper seat rests only on the curved edges of the cockpit seats. This
doesn't make it as unstable as it might seem, but a push backward will dislodge
it from it's preferred position. The good part is that I've never had it come
adrift while I was sitting on it.
The skipper seat's stability could be improved with a couple of wood strips screwed to cockpit just below where it rests. The downside to that is that you'd have two more things that stuff can get caught on, plus you have to put more holes in your boat. For now, I'll just leave it the way it is. It works pretty well for what I need just the way it is.