Tonight I focused on the mounting system for the port forward seat. It has always been intended that it could be set up to face forward while traveling, and then turned around for either seating at a table or to make more leg room.
However, as they say, the devil is in the details. How to come up with a system for mounting the seat so that it can move around and still remain secure? I came up with lots of ideas; sliding seats, mounting systems with notches, channels, all sorts of things. But as has happened while building, once again inspiration struck.
Why couldn't I cut slots in the deck and attach tabs to the seat to drop into those slots?
Brilliant!
So after three and a half hours of very careful, detailed work I finished. There are three sets of slots from back to front. The middle set is shared between forward and rearward placement.
This is the set of forward slots.
And those are two of the four tabs glued and screwed to the bottom of the forward seat. There's about six inches of clearance there which is convenient for the person in the rear seat. Leg room!
And there's the tabs sticking through the deck. They will have holes drilled in them and some sort of pin retention system to keep the seat from popping up! Note that all of the slots are in the storage compartment. Got a little lucky there.
The seat in the forward facing position. There's nineteen and a half inches from the front of the seats to either the other seat or the forward cabin wall.
And with the seat facing rearward. There will be a piece of plywood built that will serve two purposes. When used to span the gap at seat level it will make a bunk 27" wide and a little over six feet long. When raised up, it will be used as a table. When not in use I'll store it in the cuddy.
It took a long time to accurately cut those six slots and cut and mount the tabs, but they're a good tight fit with no slop and I'm very pleased.
3.5 Hours