Punch Up Your Stories with Active Verbs

How exciting is it to read a story full of “it was” or “there were” phrases? Yes, you’ve heard it before – phrases like these are a variation of passive voice, and they put readers to sleep. Let’s explore alternatives.

As an example of the difference it can make to switch out dull, boring verbs with punchier active ones, Randall McKee agreed to let me use part of a documentary type story he recently read to our newly formed lifestory writing group. Randall read the “after” version, but confirmed that his first draft was indeed full of the dull form. Since he continued to save improvements over his initial draft, I took the liberty of reverse engineering the passage, especially the verbs, back to what they might have been. The clip below was excerpted from his opening paragraph:

… Blake's Barber Shop was next to the Brownfield Hotel on North 6th Street just off Broadway. Outside the shop was a traditional red, white and blue banded barber pole. A hat tree was next to the door. It was full of silver-belly Stetsons, neatly creased fedoras and soiled blue-striped railroad engineer's caps, head coverings for gentlemen from all walks of life. There was dark paneling halfway up the wall from a white tiled floor. Behind the barbers was a long wooden breakfront. Its shelf was piled with clippers, shaving mugs, brushes, bottles of hair tonic, aftershave and jars of Barbacide with scissors, straight razors and combs soaking in it. The breakfront had a mirror along it that looked like it doubled the number of items on the shelf. …

Now compare with the final version he read to the group:

… Blake's Barber Shop was next to the Brownfield Hotel on North 6th Street, just off Broadway. Outside the shop a traditional red, white and blue banded barber pole beckoned menfolk to enter. A hat tree stood next to the door, a harbor for silver-belly Stetsons, neatly creased fedoras and soiled blue-striped railroad engineer's caps, head coverings for gentlemen from all walks of life. Dark paneling rose halfway up the wall from a white tiled floor. Behind the barbers stood a long wooden breakfront, its shelf piled with clippers, shaving mugs, brushes, bottles of hair tonic, aftershave and jars of Barbacide in which scissors, straight razors and combs soaked. A mirror stretched the breakfront length. Its reflection appeared to double the number of items on the shelf. …

Notice how the second version is laced with action verbs: beckoned, stood, rose up,  piled, soaked, stretched, appeared to double. Doesn’t that second version just jump off the page compared to the first?

You aren’t likely to get that second result on your first draft, at least not right away. Randall explained that he wrote the first draft quickly to get it down on the page. Then he worked on polishing that first pass. “I looked at each sentence to consider how I might make it better.” I think you’ll agree that he did.

Use these tips to find and replace your ho-hum verbs:

1) Read through a story with a highlighter in hand. Mark each instance you use any form of a pronoun together with a form of the verb to be. Some variations include “it is,” “there were,” and “they were.” Please note: not all forms of being verbs are banned – just clichéd phrases with pronouns.

2) Ponder each sentence to determine what’s happening in it. What’s the message?

3) Exercise your creativity to find a suitable action verb to replace the “being” verb.

You may find this a challenge at first, and I guarantee they’ll invade your first drafts. My first draft of the previous sentence, “This may be … ,” got tossed. This is a vague pronoun and “may be” is a conditional form of to be. As you gain experience, you’ll find these being phrases popping out at you everywhere. Alternate phrasings will come more easily to mind.

Who knows? You may form the habit of thinking in active phrases, punching up conversations and becoming a more compelling story teller.

Amy Cohen Discusses The Fountain at the Crossroads

Earlier this year I published A Humble Story Lives On, a post based on the work of Amy Cohen, a distant cousin of my husband’s. Amy has been busy over the last several months lovingly publishing a posthumous memoir written by Ernest Lion, another shirt-tail relative who survived the Holocaust at Auschwitz.

Amy asked for my guidance in preparing the manuscript for publication, and I became intrigued with her project as well as the story. In this post Amy explains how she came across the story and why she decided to publish it. I find it especially intriguing that a story written late in life with no known plans for publication could be found and brought to the world by a stranger. It just goes to show that you never know where your words may end up.

SL: Amy, how did you discover The Fountain at the Crossroads?

AC: I was researching the family of one of my Schoenthal cousins—Rosalie Schoenthal. She was one of only two siblings of my great-grandfather who did not immigrate to the US from Germany in the late 19^th century. She married Willie Heymann. All but two of their many children left Germany and escaped the Holocaust. The two daughters who stayed in Germany were killed by the Nazis. In trying to learn more about the lives and deaths of these cousins, I found out that one of Rosalie’s granddaughters, Liesel Mosbach, had married Ernst (later Ernest) Lion. Although Liesel was killed at Auschwitz, her husband Ernest survived. One online source included a link to a memoir written by Ernest Lion.

I clicked on the link and printed out the 200+ page manuscript. I read it in one sitting over the course of a day, tears streaming down my face, unable to put it down until I reached the last page.

SL: What did finding the story mean to you?

AC: Although the fact that Ernest was a relative initially drew me to his book, I quickly realized that his story is the story of more than six million people. It’s the story of how the Germans tried to strip them of their humanity and lives. But Ernest, like countless survivors, refused to surrender his humanity or dignity. The narrative brings you into his experiences and also his mind, allowing the reader to understand the reality of life at Auschwitz and perhaps even more importantly what it was like to survive during and after that experience.

This book reveals both the darkest and best of human nature. Ernest’s ability to persist, to escape, to build a new life in a new country, to find love and purpose is inspiring and deeply moving.

SL: How did you decide to publish it?

AC: After reading the book, I felt strongly that it needed to be read by others. But aside from a few links to the rough manuscript, there was no way for people to find this 200 page manuscript. And with no chapters and crude formatting, it was difficult to read.

So I decided to see if I could get permission to edit and publish the manuscript to make it more readable and publicly accessible.

SL: What challenges did you face?

First, I had to find out who had the rights to the book. I knew Ernest was deceased and that he had a son, but I had no way to contact him. Ernest had acknowledged a number of people in the book, including Randall Wells and Suzanne Thompson, his writing instructors at Coastal Carolina University. Through the university, I got in touch with them and got contact information for Ernest’s son Tom. I soon learned that Tom was the sole heir to Ernest’s estate and thus owned the book’s copyright.

Tom liked the idea of making his father’s book more accessible, so I began editing the manuscript. Wanting to preserve Ernest’s voice and leave content intact, I did nothing but add chapter headings, fix typos here and there, and reorganize one section so the chronology flowed more smoothly.
The second greatest challenge was figuring out how to publish it. That’s where you came in, Sharon, with advice on how to create a professional looking format. Your important suggestion that I use CreateSpace made the process of getting the book on Amazon in both print and Kindle format relatively easy.

SL: What are your hopes for this volume? 

AC: I hope that a multitude will read the book. We set the price low to keep it affordable. Our hope is that readers will gain a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and human nature.
I am hoping that schools and libraries will put the books on their shelves. I am hoping that the book will be reviewed in places where it will draw the attention of history buffs. We need help spreading the word.

---

Fountain at the Crossroad is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. You can find them here. Whatever small profits may accrue will be donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum in memory of Ernest Lion.

For an extensive array of family history stories collected and written by Amy Cohen, visit her Brotmanblog: A Family Journey.

Write Away Election Stress, part 2

In my previous post I touched on Expressive Writing as a way of dealing with post-election stress. I need to expand on that. Writing for stress relief takes more than one form, and spontaneous writing in real time is best known as journaling.

I can attest from personal experience that journaling my heart out has been hugely helpful in coming to grips with anger, confusion, and other chaotic emotions. I highly recommend it, and if your topic is a tender one that could cause the chaos to spread of others near and dear to you happened to read it, write it into the fireplace, or the shredder, or delete the file.

As great and powerful as journaling is, I’m not aware of any studies showing that it has long-term health benefits. Nor is it reliably useful for calming currently chaotic emotion.

Expressive writing is especially powerful for resolving stressful memories after the fact. This research was pioneered by James Pennebaker and expanded upon in over 200 replications in situations ranging from prison populations to cancer patients and outplaced high tech industry personnel.

In Pennebaker’s original research, people were asked to write about “a trauma, emotional upheaval, or unsettling event that has been influencing your life, spinning obsessively in your mind, and maybe keeping you awake at night” for twenty minutes on each of four consecutive days.

Subsequent studies have found similar results by having people write for as little as five minutes. They have scaled the four days back to one or two. They’ve left it consecutive and spread it out. Research in other directions sheds even more light.

Almost without exception, results showed durable health benefits. In the case of the tech workers, the ones who wrote according to the experimental protocol found new jobs significantly sooner faster than the control group.

So in concert with what I posted last week, I urge you to journal about current fears and frustration. In a few months or more, if it’s still troubling you, switch to the Pennebaker Process. Meanwhile, if journaling current stuff triggers traumatic old memories, do the four day routine with them now.

In fact, most readers here are writing lifestories anyway. Part of the healing value of expressive writing is the way it turns endless rumination loops into coherent story with context and meaning. So take this process one step further and turn the results of those 20 minute sessions into a coherent, meaningful story worthy of passing along.

Write for the health of it!

Image credit: Prawny, posted on https://morguefile.com/creative/Prawny

Write Away Election Stress

As much as we’d like to forget it all, it’s hard. Who can forget the finger pointing, the name calling, the conversations you tried not to have before November 8? We hoped it would end the next day, but we knew, most of us knew anyway, that it wouldn’t.

Here we are now, stressed, burned out and perhaps more divided than ever. Half the country is rejoicing that they managed to Trump the so-called self-righteous, socialistic feminists represented by That Woman. “Change is finally possible,” they crow. “We can get back to true values, to democracy as it was intended to be.” And on it goes.

On the flip side are those who were either Hillary’s True Believers as well as many who may not have preferred That Woman, but they claim a trained seal would be better than that devious, inexperienced, misogynistic bully. The sudden triumph of Trump seemed unimaginable and that half of the country is in deep mourning, highly traumatized.

“How can they believe all that stuff?”

“How can they just throw out all the progress we’ve made?”

And on it goes.

We’ll see how things unfold in the future, but for the present, our collective national life stress index is off the map.

The medical community has been warning us about the negative health effects of stress for over fifty years. We know it leads to cardiovascular problems, lowered immunity, depression, and a host of other ills. So what's a person to do?Lists of stress management techniques abound. A search for "stress management" turned up 16 million links. WebMD has two pages of tips, and many more of links and articles.

Fortunately, one of the simplest ways to offset the stressful effects of trauma is to pick up pen and paper and write about your thoughts, feelings, fears and perceptions. Original research showed that writing for as little as twenty minutes about troubling topics may boost your immune system and lead to numerous health benefits reversing the ravages of stress. Research has repeatedly shown enhanced cardio-vascular function, lower blood pressure, reduced asthma and arthritis symptoms, decreased need for pain medication in many instances, and more. Emotional health benefits such as relief from depression, better sleep, and enhanced sense of well-being are also common.

More recent studies have shown measurable results from writing for five or ten minutes a day, or even writing once for a few minutes. It’s undeniably clear that expressive writing is good for your health! Expressive writing is not a panacea intended to replace medical care, but it often serves as an effective adjunct, enhancing effects of any treatment you may undergo. It's affordable for anyone, and can be done anywhere.

In our current situation, you can make it even more effective by expanding your writing to include attempts to understand the perspective of those on the other side of the electoral divide. Think and write as deeply about their fears, hopes and concerns as you do your own. You may find you have more in common than you imagined. You may discover deeper compassion for others as well as your self and begin to rebuild community that may have suffered over the last several months.

Please leave a comment about ways you are using writing to recover from election stress, along with any other tips you may have.

Composite Memory

I was in third grade when Ike ran against Adlai. I’ve formed a composite memory of that campaign, the only one I clearly remember. My composite image is set outside the door of my third grade classroom. The classroom windows faced northeast, and a thick row of ponderosa pines bordered the school yard about fifteen feet beyond the sidewalk and a strip of grass running along the side of the school. Class began at 8:30, and we were careful to be standing outside our room a few minutes early so we’d be ready to bolt in the door the minute Miss Hones opened it.

We usually lined up as we arrived, but as election day grew near, we began to form into two camps outside that door. I stood with the Republican kids to the right, next to the protruding partition separating our room from the next one. The Democrat kids clustered near the partition at the other end by the door.

“I like Ike!” we chanted at the top of our lungs. “Stevenson! Stevenson!” they chanted in return, each group pausing to make space for the other. This chanting went on for several minutes until Miss Hones opened the door.

I say it’s a composite memory because although I feel certain this group activity took place daily for … who knows? A week? Two weeks? A month? … I have only one mental image. That image is clear and complete. I feel the nip of late fall in the air and appreciate my warm wooly sweater. On this particular day in memory, the sky must be overcast, because the scene is drab and washed out, missing the brilliant sunshine that usually peeked through the trees. I feel the joy of shouting and feeling part of a group. I feel the joy of being part of something larger, something historic.

This election stands out for me because my grandmother had been a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1952, so of course my family supported Ike. Oddly enough, I remember nothing about the 1956 election, though once again she was a delegate. and once again Ike squared off against Adlai. How I wish now I’d thought to ask her in great detail what she had seen, heard and done at those conventions! How I wish she had written that story!

Most memories of place or repeating events are composite. Even specific memories are pasted into composite backgrounds. The day one shy classmate was about twenty minutes late arriving at school and hid in the coat closet until recess stands out, but only against a composite of an ordinary day. Recess is a composite with several variations including Boys Chase Girls (or vice-versa), jacks, jump rope, and so forth.

Composite memories are useful in many ways.

• Yeast for more involved stories or essays. My impassioned-but-civilized election memory stands in stark contrast to what seems barbaric behavior in this year’s electoral scene. I could explore that contrast in an essay.
• Food for thought in terms of exploring attitudes, values and relationships. During those chants I felt part of the Republican group. Much of the time I felt like a misfit at school.
• Source material for writing descriptions. The setting was the same outside that classroom all year long. In fact, it was much the same for third grade through fifth when my classrooms were all on that side of that school.
• Vignettes for inclusion in a larger story. This composite memory could easily become a scene in a tale of growing up in Los Alamos, or my involvement in politics or … who knows?

Standing on its own, this memory is much like a simple snapshot crammed into a shoebox. But like those piles of photos we have hidden away, who knows when one of those pictures will leap out to trigger a memory, seed a longer story, or just warm our hearts for a few minutes as we remember.

Honor those memories. Write them down, perhaps as I’ve done here, and treasure them. Skim back through them now and then, like you do with photos. You never know when they might spark a new thought, insight or story.

Secrets of Saving as PDF, How and Why

You’ve seen links like the one above. You’ve probably clicked them and know they produce PDF files. Did you know you can save your own files in that form? Did you know when and why know you should? Here are three compelling reasons:

1. If you share a Word document with someone else, they may not have the same version as you, and they may not have the fonts you use. Your document may not display right for them. By saving as a PDF, you can embed the fonts, and the file will look the same on a Mac, a PC, or an Android based device.
2. If you share a Word document, others can copy from or edit it. PDF files are more secure. Few people know how to copy text from a PDF file. Fewer still have a clue how to edit them or the special software to do so.
3. If you upload to an online printer, like CreateSpace or any POD publisher, they require PDF files, and they must have embedded fonts and be formatted with the right paper size for your project.
4. For long-term storage, PDF is the archivist’s best bet. PDF files from twenty years ago still display just fine. That’s definitely not the case with word processing documents.

The good news is that this conversion is easy to do and if you don’t already have software to do it, it’s widely available for free.

So, you say, “I’m sold. How do I do this?”

The tutorial below will walk you through three different paths, starting with the simplest one first.

Save as a PDF with Word (or OpenOffice or most any word processing program)

1. Whatever program you’re using, select Save As. They’ll all be pretty much the same as what you see here.
2. Click the tiny arrow on the right of the Save as type field. Select PDF from the flyout menu.
   
   
3. Check the options. First check that your file is optimized for printing if you are uploading to CreateSpace or have other plans to print. If it’s primarily for onscreen viewing, select the Minimum size option.  Then click the Options menu to the right and make sure the box, Bitmap Text when fonts may not be embedded is checked.
   
   
   Word automatically adjusts page size (in case you are saving a file with pages some size other than 8.5” x 11”) and embeds fonts. Some commercial fonts can’t be embedded, at least not without a special license. This option ensures they’ll be readable on the other end.

LibreOffice, based on OpenOffice, has an Export as PDF function rather than Save As. For POD publishing, select 100% for JPEG compressions. Other tabs include lots of bells and whistles, but nothing important for our purposes here.

Print as a PDF

Aside from word processing programs and maybe a couple of others, you create PDF files by “printing” them to a digital page. To do this you use a printer driver much like the one for printers that use ink. This means that if you find an error and need to fix it, you go back to your source file, i.e. your Word document, make your change, then “print” the file again, just as you’d do with paper.

Many PDF printer apps are available for free download on the Internet. The ones I’ve looked at all use print setup interfaces similar to one of the two types I’ll show below. I’ll begin with Cute PDF, but first a caveat about downloading any free software:

It often comes bundled with add-on apps. You do not need these add-on apps. They probably aren’t malware, but why take the chance? Only download specific programs that you know you need, want and trust. The add-ons keep the software free, but you can avoid them by paying close attention. Reputable software publishers today offer you the opportunity to opt out of add-ons. If you see any window that asks you to click to install anything other than the app you selected, look for an opportunity to Decline, or a button that says Next. If you don’t see any option like this. kill the installation and find another app. If you accidentally download something you don’t want, on a Windows machine, use System Restore and go back to the a time before the download.

Now a second caveat: I’ve used both the apps in the examples below and they are both satisfactory. They are not necessarily the best or the latest. The field keeps changing. Do a search for PDF conversion software, then check reviews before selecting one. You may want to try two or three.  And don’t be fooled that you need to buy anything unless you want to edit PDFs. If you don’t know, you don’t need it. The conversion engine will be free.

Using the Cute PDF Interface

This interface has been around for years and is shared by many of the free apps.

1. Find your way to the Print menu for your file. Click the arrow on the right and select Cute PDF (or another of your choice) as your printer.
   
   
2. Click Printer Properties to open the printer setup dialog.
   
   
3. Click Advanced on the Document Properties menu.
   
   
   From here you can change the page orientation, and select color or grayscale from the Paper/Quality tab. Advanced gives you more options, including embedding fonts.
   
4. By default most PDF printers substitute device fonts to keep file size small. Play it safe over the long run. Embed your fonts by selecting Download as Softfont in the TrueType font line.
   
   
   
5. Change paper size. This won’t matter if you’re sticking with standard letter-sized paper. For books and other special projects, you need the Paper Size option.
   
   
6. Monitor Print Quality. This app saves images at 600 dpi by default. CreateSpace asks for 300 dpi, which also works well on home printers. Nothing but file size is gained by saving them at higher resolution.
   
   
7. In the fly out that opens when you click the Paper Size field, check to see if your page size is listed. If not, scroll down to PostScript Custom Page Size. A new menu will open.
   
   
8. Enter your page dimensions. These should be identical to the paper size you designated in Word.  You will probably use inches, but millimeters and points are also options. Don’t concern yourself with the rest.
   
   

That’s it. Click OK as many times as you need, then click Print. You’ll be asked to specify a file name and location the same as saving any other file. Remember, this is a digital page, so it’s stored as a digital file, just like your Word document.

Using the Foxit Phantom PDF Printer

This app uses a newer interface with fewer options. Don’t concern yourself with what you don’t see.

1. Select Foxit Phantom PDF Printer and click on Printer Properties as above.
2. On the General tab, select Quality and Color. For publishing, you want High Quality Print. For other purposes, standard works fine. Don’t concern yourself with the confusing options behind that Edit button.
   
3. Alter page size if needed on the Layout tab. Click the Custom Page Size button.
   
4. Enter your page size. As above, this needs to be identical to your document paper size.
   
   
5. That’s it. Click Okay and print as above. You can add document properties information as you wish. If you’re saving for widespread public distribution, this is a way to ensure you retain credit for your work.

You may find slight variations in software interfaces, but these three examples should be enough to guide you through any of them. Now, go forth and fill hard drives and cyberspace with your work!

A Safe Space for Survivors

In spite of nature’s best efforts to derail my plans, in the form of Hurricane Matthew, they are proceeding apace, including the plan to design QUIDNON—the houseboat that sails. The hurricane provided a teachable moment on surviving hurricanes aboard boats, confirming many of my intuitions about what makes QUIDNON a safe design for any situation, hurricanes included.

We were in a mandatory evacuation zone, and although we could have sheltered in place, I decided to avoid subjecting my family to such an ordeal. And so we jumped in a rental car, drove away from the coast and sat out the hurricane in a motel room. When we got back, picking our way between piles of debris that were littering the roads, we found that the boat had suffered zero damage, but that the entire marina came within a foot or so of being annihilated: another foot of storm surge, and only some concrete pilings would have been left, with the rest of the marina, boats included, washed up on shore, with the boats crushed underneath the floating docks. In fact, this is what happened to many of the other marinas in the area. Since the height of the pilings was set a long time ago, when ocean levels weren’t rising as quickly and catastrophic storms were less frequent, this is going to be happening more and more frequently. Everyone here considers the fact that the marina survived something of a miracle.

Boats at anchor did not fare too well either; most of them have ended up on shore when their anchors dragged or failed. Of these, the sailboats did the worst: the combination of a lead keel mounted to an eggshell-like fiberglass hull is a bad one when it comes to tackling land. Once the keel hits and the boat flops over, total damage becomes almost inevitable. The boats that did the best were mored to stationary anchors with chain: large concrete blocks embedded in the bottom. Well-designed boats don’t care too much about wind and water; it’s solid objects that kill them.

These observations validate some of the design decisions that went into designing QUIDNON:

1. The ability to get out of the marina in a hurry is very important. Most people who live aboard boats don’t put too much effort into making sure that the engine is in good running order. For an inboard diesel this is quite a lot of effort and expense. And so when the time comes to move the boat out of the marina and put it on a mooring, the engine may not even start, or start and then stall because the fuel is old and the fuel filter becomes clogged with sediment. But since QUIDNON is going to be powered by an outboard motor mounted in an inboard well, this will be less of a problem. First, the motor can be used to power a dinghy when QUIDNON is at rest; secondly, outboard motors are much easier to lay up, and usually fire up afterword with just a bit of effort. Gasoline does not grow bacteria like diesel fuel, and can be stabilized and stored over long periods of time.

2. No matter how hard you try, your boat may end up on dry land. Therefore, it is very important that QUIDNON goes aground well. Having a wide, flat bottom covered in roofing copper over tarred felt will make QUIDNON relatively shore-friendly: roofing copper is tough material, and will work-harden rather than rip. Once the extreme weather passes, it should be able to drag QUIDNON back into the water over round sticks using the anchor winch.

3. A hurricane is not a convenient time to go sailing. Sailboats have masts, which generate windage during a hurricane, and are not useful unless you plan to go sailing. After a hurricane some number of masts can be seen poking out of the water at low tide: not only were these masts of no use during the sinking, but they now pose a hazard to navigation. QUIDNON’s masts can be taken down and lashed to the deck by a single person in an hour or so, reducing windage and weight up top.

4. Once the hurricane is over, weeks may pass before the local economy gets back to normal. Food, electricity and gasoline are likely to remain scarce for some time. In order to make it, is important to have lots of storage space stocked with food and water. QUIDNON’s ample lockers and massive water tanks (which double as ballast) can provide for months of autonomous survival.

5. The safest place for a boat during a hurricane is on shore. This is true even for keelboats, which are stored on jacks and can get pushed over in a hurricane. QUIDNON needs no special arrangements of this sort, and can simply sit on a patch of dirt, next to your house, stocked and ready to serve as hurricane shelter or, if the waters reach high enough, a floating escape capsule. Moored between two pilings in a flood zone, it will simply float up in case of a flood, then settle again.

6. Even if the motor runs, it may turn out to be impossible to move the boat out of harm’s way because its bottom and prop are fouled with marine growth. People who live aboard boats don’t usually find it necessary to haul them out and repaint the bottom with anti-fouling paint every where. And so they find that their boat won’t move when it has to, even with the engine at full throttle. QUIDNON’s bottom is surfaced with roofing copper designed to provide anti-fouling for the expected lifetime of the boat (around 30 years), will never need to be hauled out and repainted, and will always be ready to move.

7. There are cases where there is simply nowhere for a boat to shelter near land, and the safest survival strategy is to head for open water and away from any dirt or rocks. Remember, sticks and stones will kill a boat, but wind and water are its natural element. Here, it is very important that the boat have certain characteristics that allow it to survive any conditions, no matter how wild. Stability and the ability to self-right is very important, and QUIDNON's impressive 130º of primary stability will help it stay right-side-up no matter.

9. Although staying well away from dirt and rocks buys a large amount of safety, there is still the small chance of encountering floating debris that can hole a hull. Here, QUIDNON's self-rescuing characteristics are very helpful: blowing out the water tanks with compressed air, making them buoyant and blocking off the aft cabins to allow additional flotation, allows it to remain afloat with the cabin knee-deep in water until the hole is plugged and the water pumped out.

10. When disaster strikes and you happen to be possessed of a secure, well-stocked, self-sufficient survival capsule such as QUIDNON, you may find that you have more company than you expected. Most 36-foot sailboats usually can’t accommodate more than four or five people with any degree of comfort. In contrast, QUIDNON’s interior space is rather carefully carved up to provide the maximum of accommodation with a maximum of flexibility. There are two aft cabins that can sleep two adults each, four settees (two in the main salon, two in the bow cabin), two pilot berths in the main salon that provide beds for two adults each, or a larger number of children, and two generous shelves in the bow cabin that can provide cribs for babies. There is a full galley to cook for all of them, and a heads with a full-size shower stall and a mini-bathtub for the kids to wash them all.

* * *
This last point is the one that I would like to discuss here at some length, because we are nearing the end of the design process to maximize the interior space. The interior structure—the bulkheads, the sides and the top of the water tanks and the board trunks, the settees, the cabin soles and the various partitions—are all made of plywood pieces that are joined together in a variety of ways: jigsaw joints, box joints, and mortise and tenon joints. Each element serves two purposes: it maximizes the use of space, and it also maximizes structural rigidity: everything is structural.

It's a split-level

Next project on the list is to analyze the structure using software, to identify stress concentrations and weak points, to select appropriate thicknesses of plywood for all the elements, and to add gussets and other reinforcements where necessary.

Top view of interior structure

At the center of the boat is the companionway. It is trapezoidal in shape, and has openings in six directions: up the companionway ladder to the cockpit, two openings leading to the aft cabins (equipped with sliding doors for full privacy), an opening to port going to the heads (also set up with a door), an opening to starboard to the galley (always open) and, finally, an opening to the main salon, equipped with a curtain. There is a similar opening, with a curtain, between the main salon and the bow cabin.

Lots of room between the deck and the cabin soles

Because of the curve of the bottom the cabin soles are at five different levels. The lowest are in the galley and the heads, where people (including very tall people) are most likely to be standing for extended periods of time, with a full 6’10” (2 m) of headroom. The cabin sole in the companionway is a bit higher, because there is 3 tons of solid ballast under it.

Bottom view of the interior structure

The aft cabins are not designed for standing room, and are just 4’7” (140 cm) in height, but provide plenty of locker space below the cabin soles. They can be used as storage, as sleeping accommodations, and, with the bed rolled up and stowed and a drop-leaf table and a fold-out seat, serve as a workshop, a study or even a miniature classroom.

The main salon has 6’3” (190 cm) of headroom, which is enough for some 90% of the people to avoid having to stoop. The settees and the pilot berths, at 10’ (3 m) long, provide room for up to eight people to stretch out with their heads pointed in opposite directions (with some overlap between their legs).

Cabin measurements. Beam is around 15 feet except at the bow

The bow cabin, with 5’9” (175 cm) of headroom and the settees 6’9” (205 cm) long, is still adequate for all but the tallest people.

Because every element is both functional and structural, we have made every effort to keep the layout as generic and multipurpose as possible while maximizing both living space and locker space. Completely missing are shelves, cabinets, hanging lockers, slide-out drawers and other typical cabinetry. There will be some built-in cabinetry in the galley and the heads, to be sure, but the overall approach is to provide a minimum of structure, which will be unalterable, and allow people to customize the rest as they see fit.