Dazcat Recreational Platform

Ever-increasing house prices and electric bills, phone bills, water bills, rates - it feels like everybody wants a slice of your wage packet. Why not sod 'em all and find a new way of living with fewer bills?

The Dazcat RP (Recreational Platform) is intended as a pontoon style live aboard or holiday apartment with a flexible layout to suit each individual’s requirements. The idea is to create an open plan space partitioned by using sail cloth screens and standard house furniture. Each client can fit the furniture they like, giving their own RP individuality, as well as making it feel more like a modern apartment than a boat, with vast windows for light, air and views. The RP is also supremely wheelchair-friendly, with large flat areas all on one level for ease of access and wide decks at either end that can be fitted with a ramp for getting on and off. It can also come with a long pontoon designed to moor a variety of toys, including the tugboat for moving the RP into different locations, from estuaries to sheltered coves in the summer, as well as giving access from shore to RP all year round.

Commercial applications include classrooms afloat, office spaces, studios and workshops. Or how about a restaurant where passing yachtsmen could come to moor up in safety and have their catch of the day cooked for them, leaving them to enjoy the night’s entertainment and meet likeminded adventurers? Or imagine an RP community created by mooring a fleet of RPs together creating a floating atoll. This could be used as a floating holiday village in the right areas.

The Dazcat RP comes in different sizes, and can be made locally to plans using a combination of construction methods to suit the particular area and resources available to the client. Or it can be built by us. Construction methods range from timber ply and timber, (bio)composite, steel or aluminium, giving you a variety of structurally sound options to suit your budget.

The RP concept is unlike a boat in the fact that it is not designed to travel large distances on open water and has no built-in means of propulsion, though this can be designed in. It is intended to be a nomadic base from which to enjoy a range of marine activities like sailing, power boating, fishing and diving. Or relaxing in solitude or with friends.

The RP can be a very green way of living, with the use of alternative power supplies like solar, wind and tidal power, low voltage lighting and entertainment systems running on 12 or 24 volt. These were the specifications of the original client.

A simple solar water heater provides a supply of hot water throughout the summer. A large water tank with rainwater collection and purifying, as well as a desalination plant, can provide fresh water for rinsing kit, showers and purified drinking water, and can be connected to a separate diesel water heater to supply under-floor heating and hot water throughout the winter.

Cooking is done on an electric hob run by a diesel generator, creating a single source of fuel; with a large tank the RP will last over a year without refuelling. Biodiesel is also an option, though this will require a system to agitate the tank from time to time to prevent algal growth.

The requirements for dock side support would be minimal. A marina RP is also possible, reducing the cost of kit fitted due to shore support, but increasing the mooring costs.

If you are interested in having an RP it is important that you first consider where you will be putting it, how independent you want it to be, the local mooring restrictions and how they might affect your RP’s specifications, as well as what materials would suit you best, and if you want it built locally or here in Cornwall. Once you have thought these things through give us a call and we will be delighted to fix a price for you.