Our Discovery: a Gangway. Who Knew?

Whenever Kent and I dock our catamaran in a marina, we typically back in. When there is a finger pier between our boat and the one next to us, we exit and board our boat off the side. This can be a bit scary depending on the height of the dock, but it works.

However, in the French islands in the Caribbean, there are no finger piers between boats. We've been reduced to leaping gracefully--or not--off the stern (back) onto the dock. We noticed that all the French boats had gangways, or gangplanks, that bridge their boats to the dock off the stern. Every time we leapt perilously between dock and our boat, we were so jealous!

Fast forward to today. We have a long list of to-do's and cleaning out the lazerettes, or storage cabinets, in our aft salon was low on our list. Kent emptied and cleaned one out today, and lo and behold! Guess what he found? A beautiful teak and stainless steel folding gangway! It's in excellent condition. If only we knew we had it before Kent fell in the water getting off our boat in Guadaloupe!

It was on our list to buy one. Looks like we just saved about $2,000!

The gangway hidden in the lazerette. Teak and stainless steel.
There is a stainless steel handrail too, but no pic.

We wondered what that special fancy fitting in our stern stairs was for! 

See the fitting which attaches the gangway to the middle stair.

We can hardly wait to use it!