Cockpit locker storage ideas

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Yorkshire Exile

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I have one large deep cockpit locker which has the fuel tank on a shelf and the domestic hot water cylinder (29ft boat). That still leaves lots of room for ropes, small fenders, boat hook etc. However loose items gravitate to the bottom where they are hard to reach and get damp/wet. To improve issues I would like to attach some form of rope netting bag to the outer side (the boat is double skinned here) which would be a useful place to put mooring and other ropes. My initial idea is to buy something ready made. Any ideas where I could find somthing like this or do you have other suggestions to help organise a cockpit locker?
 
Yorkshire Exile said:
I have one large deep cockpit locker which has the fuel tank on a shelf and the domestic hot water cylinder (29ft boat). That still leaves lots of room for ropes, small fenders, boat hook etc. However loose items gravitate to the bottom where they are hard to reach and get damp/wet. To improve issues I would like to attach some form of rope netting bag to the outer side (the boat is double skinned here) which would be a useful place to put mooring and other ropes. My initial idea is to buy something ready made. Any ideas where I could find somthing like this or do you have other suggestions to help organise a cockpit locker?
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I have made large drawstring bags I used some ripstop nylon, in different colours, so easy to identify, then easy to grab the right bag with the contents. you could make the bases from a mesh if you want them to drain.
 
I like a series of hooks, each with a retaining loop, to hang mooring warps, fenders and spare sheets etc. Haven't got around to it though...

You can also consider installing a false bottom.

Or even two false bottoms. One purely to assist drainage / air circulation, a couple of inches up, drilled with as many holes as you fancy, the other halfway up and with a lifting section. The oft-used items are then more easily to hand, while the seldom-used items are constrained in their ability to strangle each other.
 
I epoxied two wood blocks to the side of the hull, high up, and fixed a strong rail to this. Using cut down, flat, alloy coat hooks sorts out ropes.
My two biggest fenders have lines each end and looping these around the very end of the rail they form a sort of hammock, the second one sits on the first.
This means all the ropes and two huge fenders are sorted, you can hardly see them (but can reach them), The rest of the locker is free, spare fuel in the bottom more fenders etc. I am lucky to have a second smaller locker for really small things.

My boat is not large but I carry 10 fenders and, if I have to, still find room in there for an outboard and Redstart.
 
We have a deep locker, which I fitted a rail to the cockpit side. It doubles as a step for getting into the locker. Fenders and lines are simply clove hitched to it.
Should do more really.
 
Another using a rail - ours is a 25mm stainless steel pole but mounted along the outboard side of the locker, fixed with wooden blocks to the forward and rear bulkheads. Small bits of ropes with eye splice in one end and plastic hooks hold some things, ropes simply tied to the rail.
Also visit Ikea for various options of storage boxes or plastic laundry baskets.
 
I have plastic boxes in the locker and use scuba diving mesh bags to store all of my lines. I do seem to lots lines and use different coloured bags for different lines. They are very strong and have draw strings, quick dry and you lines don’t go mouldy etc
 
My cockpit locker is very deep! It has a false floor the cavity beneath which, acts as a grey water tank. The total locker is sealed from the inside of the boat. I have made nets (knitting is not only for women!) and I also use different colours. The problem is that there is suitable candidate to be consigned to the bottom.
I have drop down steps to enable climbing.
 
My cockpit locker is not a good model for organisation, though it does have slots for stowage of the washboards. Otherwise, it has to stow a dinghy, liferaft, the odd bike, lines, water hose, mooring hook, deck brush, boat hook and some tools.

A good idea I saw on a sister-ship but never got around to copying was a plastic pipe secured at the top of the locker running aft, which could be used to keep the deck brush and boathook out of the way.
 
Thank you for some useful ideas. I am tending towards the rails idea + some plastic boxes. I am very impressed by the size of some of your lockers.
 
The cockpit lockers on our Halmatic 30 were very deep, I fitted a wooden rail to the inboard edge of one and then had a row of loops and hooks from which I could hang all the warps and some other things such as shore power cable. This kept the remaining space clear to fit in bulkier items such as fenders and everything was reasonably accessible.
 
Our boat has a length of 4x2 crudely glassed to the inside of the hull just under the coaming and coated in flowcoat to hide the crude joins and fixings. We have hooks screwed to it at about 10" spacing each with a loop of line. all our warps, spare sheets etc are coiled and suspended on the loops, these loops are long enough to take three lines each so there are a couple spare to hold plastic bags containing sundry stuff like diesel and fresh water funnels etc. Behind the fall of the coils against the hull there is a length of board used as a fender board. There is a 12v light above. The space used is beyond the removable flat plywood floors of the locker covering the fuel tank and calorifier, on these I store three large coloured polythene boxes (you do not seem to get big strong versions of these any more). One holds buckets and cleaning stuff, one a 20l. drum of diesel, oil and coolant and the third is sundries incuding some spares. Because the hooks are high I can reach any of the ropes without moving anything else. The spare petrol for the outboard lives in the drained anchorlocker up front.
 
Our Finngulf (regrettably now gone to Salcombe) had a cockpit locker long and deep enough for two folding bikes plus 2x 25 litre fuel drums with a false floor below for hiding contraband, aft either side of the gas locker the two lockers under the helm seat were so deep that you could not see out when you were standing in them, requiring considerable acrobatics to recover anything that fell to the bottom, so everthing needed to be in bags or buckets and securely hooked to the battens round the top. The hooks there each had two loops one long and one short so that ropes etc. lower down could easily be recovered past the stuff suspended above.
 
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