Like many Bay Area sailors, I had dreamed of adding a dodger to Yakamoz, my 1978 Columbia 10.7, but had assimilated the conventional wisdom that dodgers are luxuries, useful only on long passages. While I’d sailed to the Farallones and Drakes Bay numerous times, my perspective shifted dramatically during a night anchored off Santa Cruz Island on my friend’s Morgan 41. Unable to sleep below, I nestled under his dodger, watching 40-knot gusts shake the rigging and reveal a dazzling canopy of stars rarely seen from the Bay. For the rest of the voyage, that dodger became my sanctuary – a place to read, watch dolphins play, and find shelter from the elements. The contrast with my previous exposed passages convinced me: it was time to sell those ETFs and invest in something truly valuable.

Let’s start with the safety consideration. If you have a dodger, especially one with hand grabs along the sides, and an aft handrail, then you know that this changes the game. There are three key scenarios where the safety factor aboard has been increased and I will describe these.

Section 1: Safety

1. Boarding. As I approached my vessel wondering when I would see its usefulness the answer came only seconds later as I naturally grabbed the portside dodger handrail.  Just like launch and landing a vessel are the times of greatest danger, so too is boarding and unboarding.  Before this day, boarding had been witness to much stumbling and occasional mishap-both for me and many of my guests. After you grab the portside handrail, it’s natural to transition to the aft rail, as you step into the cockpit. I see every single one of my crew and guests ages 4-80 make the same motions, grabbing the hand holds the same way, ensuring safe passage onto Yakamoz. 

2. Going forward. On any given Bay Sail, I pass from cockpit to deck and back many dozens of times and so do my crew. In the past, there was a dead zone between the pedestal and the first hand hold on the deck. This deadzone was about 4 arm lengths, one had to sorta cling to the sheets or the open hatch to get to the deck. This was fine on calm 15-knot days, but I like sailing more than just that. I have endured too many moments of uncertainty while contemplating going on deck to do something of importance. Now, going forward is a simple, very human task, of grabbing the aft rail, stepping up, grabbing the side rail, then stepping and now you’re in reach of the hand rail on the cabin top. 

3. The aft handrail also increased safety when entering and exiting the cockpit, this time going below or coming up. I watch myself and others naturally grab the aft rail as they step over the fly bridge and prepare to descend. Ironically, I had worried that dodger would prove a hindrance to going below, what it actually does is it increases caution and provides crew with a solid hand hold when stepping in or out. This benefit is not to be understated, as I have fallen down my companionway steps and do not recommend it. In short, where before there was a precarious hole in my cabin, now there is a secure passageway down to the cabin.  

4. The cockpit just got safer (and bigger). This aft hand rail is not just useful when stepping onto the deck or returning to the cockpit. Most of the time sailing is spent in the cockpit. Previously it was not possible to stand near the fly bridge, especially in rough weather. Now, crew members naturally grab hold of the aft rail, while standing on the high side. This has had a curious effect: the forward part of the cockpit is now more useful, a place to stand even while heeled way over. In a sense, the cockpit is bigger. 

The net effect, then, is of increased safety when stepping onto the boat, going forward, stepping down into the cockpit, going below climbing, coming up the steps and stepping onto the deck. The experienced sailor knows that these are often the most injury prone areas activities on a boat. After all,  the most common cause of injury and death in sailing has to do with common falling and not what we fear most: rare demasting, holes in the hull and other unmentionable catastrophes.

Section 2: More sailing, funner sailing

Sailing in the Bay is often touted as challenging and decidedly not tropical – a place that somehow combines Caribbean-level UV radiation with arctic winds. While novice and salty sailors alike quote Mark Twain about the cold in July while slathering on sunscreen, the real challenge isn’t the conditions – it’s finding time to sail at all. For Bay Area sailors, even with 52 weekends and two weeks of vacation, we have at most 114 potential sailing days annually. Life’s demands – work, family, maintenance, and traffic – drastically reduce these opportunities. The trick is making the most of every chance to sail, even in heavy weather.

While reefing helps keep the boat level and the mast attached, it won’t keep the cockpit comfortable when waves splash over the bow of even the driest sailboat. That’s where my new dodger has  transformed the experience. Now, heavy weather days have become my favorite time to sail. With two reefs in the main, a sliver of jib, and a protected cockpit, we’re comfortable in conditions that keep most boats at the dock. Case in point: on December 16, 2024, while tornadoes were battering Scotts Valley, we were in our own personal Caribbean on Yakamoz. We’d put the mighty third reef in at the dock, and sailed with an orange yankee cut heavy weather jib. We were alone in the bay, sipping hot chocolate and solving the world’s problems in our sheltered six-person cockpit.

Section 3:  Comfort

The word comfort is used in so many situations that its use in sailing is misleading. If you’ve stood watch for hours a time in the cold, dark night on passage, you know how tired and disoriented the cold and wind make you. In my view, comfort can be a bad thing. I think of chasing comfort as taking away from my strength – and sailing certainly has its discomforts, discomforts that many of us welcome or learn from. But, comfort is also a matter of life and death. Staying dry and warm while steering or standing watch are of the utmost importance. In the end we are frail meatsacks, and when hypothermia or deep discomfort sets in we lose focus, make mistakes. This should come as no surprise to most folks reading this. This idea is the common motivator for getting a dodger, especially for ocean passage.

In this article we’ve already looked at how adding a dodger to my 36 foot Columbia 10.7 has significantly added to the safety of her crew, added room to the cockpit and increased the number of sailing days available to me as a hobbyist sailor. In the last paragraph, we briefly discussed the established wisdom behind proper comfort in the cockpit warm dry sailors keep themselves and the vessel safe. I found, however, one surprising benefit from installing a good dodger on my boat: dockside comfort. 

Dockside Comfort:
Sure, I have rebuilt Yakamoz to be an ocean-worthy coastal cruiser and I sail her once a week or so in the SF Bay, but she spends most of the year docked. The thing is, I love spending time on my boat at the Marina. I can’t think of a better real-estate hack in one of the most expensive real-estate markets in the US than docking a great sailboat at one of the Bay’s  many marinas. Where else can you get waterside property, wildlife interactions and neighbors who help and know each other for a few hundred a month?

I use my boat as an office sometimes, when my work is laptop-based. I use it as a place to throw small, intimate parties, even on days when we didn’t sail. I use it as a place to get away from my home life when my partner and I both agree we need some space.

Before I had the dodger, I didn’t so much like being on during the rainy days, since the cabin can get a bit stuffy. On summer days when the wind smashes into our marina from the West, I also have to close the hatch – it’s just too cold. 

Things are completely different now. Rainy days are a dream, as I can leave the hatch totally open. I listen to the tapping of the rain on my new blue dodger. On windy days, I keep my boat bow to wind and the dodger blocks it all. Sometimes I am shocked when I pop out that it’s really blowing 30.

Conclusion,

Getting a good dodger, a custom built dodger that is designed for needs and my boat is one of the best financial decisions I have ever made. Safety has been greatly increased aboard, my cockpit is magically bigger, I sail more and the time I spend on the boat dockside is much nicer. I didn’t mention how people stroke the dodger and comment incessantly about how nice it is, after all, that would be boasting.