My daughter is now 18 months old and she can walk very well. Furthermore, she is curious and would not just like to stay under deck while sailing and climbs basically anywhere. So, what to do if you would like to have a save and comfortable place for her on deck where she can’t go over board?

What I came up with is this construction:

It is asymmetrically mounted in the cockpit in order to allow for easy access to the autopilot being mounted next to the entrance of the cabin and to the entrance itself.

As you can see it is also portable – so it can be either used under deck or be completely removed if you go racing with your friends:

So, how did I build it:

• First of all I used an old Römer Jockey Comfort bike seat for children (which you can buy used for very little money).
• Then I sawed off the two leg-supports of the seat so that the base-plate of the seat could be mounted on a piece of water-proof boat plywood. Please note that the seat is exactly mounted on the edge of the plywood so that my daughter can have her feed dangling down while using the seat at our cabin table.
• You can use the two integrated nuts in the bottom of the seat to attach the seat to the plate but I decided to put two additional screws through the wholes in the seating area of the seat.
• In the cockpit I glued two self-made stripes of wood with Tikalflex (sorry for the look being a bit shabby – it was easily possible to remove the glue later on).
• It is possible to push the base-plate under these stripes and the seat is fixed and can be secured with screws or anything comparable that is pushed through the holes in the stripes.
• I painted the whole wood white.

Please have a look at the attached gallery. The whole thing works really nice – however and obviously I do not take any guarantee for the safety of your children while using this setup.