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Where is the best location to install a ladder on my top hat? I am trying to source the right one...hope someone can help.

I just used one of the removable 4 step, aluminium with plastic treads type ones you get from BCF or online etc, I found it not too bothersome to set up, only took a minute or so, folds away for storing, you just need to actually remember to get it out "before" you dive in, and tie a small lanyard to it to stop it falling off while it's over the side.
Cheers

The expensive one at Whitworths is good value, if you're going to use it a lot. It has special clip fittings that screw to the deck, to the feet lock in place.

As a person who, when married, would dive over the side and forget to put the ladder over the side....... I now have a permanently fixed ladder on my solo owned Top Hat. Mine is attached to a boarding platform on the stern.

I can drop the platform and the ladder from the water. Ladder goes about 3 foot below the water surface. Super easy. Had the platform and ladder built and installed by a shipwright.

I've been pondering this myself, when I first boarded my vessel (from a rubber dinghy) the seller had the two wire stays undone for the side railings, and we kinda clambered up where the side winches are located. I've got a boarding platform at the rear, but the rear railing/pushpit and antennas and backstays and other nonsense are in the way. How do you chaps board from a dinghy? Should one make a permanent side 'gate' near the winches, with some kind of ladder attached there? Or split the pushpit into two halves, with an entrance from the rear boarding platform? I'm thinking end the wire stays for the side railings at the stanchion just ahead of the winch, and have a wire or two with a clip so we can open it to climb aboard. Thank you for your suggestions, cheerio!

You don't need anything from a dingy.

Tie up your dinghy bow rope so you are positioned at your mast stays, stand up and using the stays for support climb onboard.

Remember to NOT push off from the dinghy but use the deck gunnel to boost yourself onboard.

Now getting out of the water is a different story and here you will need a ladder of some sort somewhere.

Getting old Mike ?
Bear