News from Heron's galley

We've been working really hard on our boat these past couple of months and several projects have been finished. Our galley is not completely done yet, but is getting the look that we planned. Unfortunately there's still a lot of things to do and the date of our departure is not yet determined. But maybe the cold and wet May that we had was really a blessing in disguise because it wasn't so difficult to work all days instead of already sailing somewhere in Italy.

Nevertheless, birds started to mate and make nests and on a motorboat couple of boats down on our pier an Eurasian coot (črna liska) made a nest on their swimming platform and even laid and egg in it. We saw her once and she got quite upset with us passing by, probably also by others, and after that encounter we didn't see her again. Poor little thing abandoned the nest. The egg was still there for couple of days, and then it was gone, maybe some animal took it. I'm sorry it ended like that, but the spot she chose for her nest was really bad. Hope her next try was more successful. 

Beside the fridge, the renovation of the countertop was the most difficult and time consuming project in our galley. The old one was not very pretty, but we would gladly keep it if it wasn't cracked on several spots, and when the water got into cracks it started to swell up and cracks got bigger. At first we thought we might want to remove the complete countertop and put in the new one. The old one is made of two pieces, both huge, and is thoroughly glued and screwed in place and it looks like it could be a structural element. Surely it was put in place before the deck was put onto the boat. We figured out that we could't get such huge pieces of material into the boat, and even if we did, we would never be able to built it in and make it so sturdy and strong as the old one is. So we made another plan - we would keep the old countertop, after all there was nothing wrong with it, and try to remove the top layer and replace it with something new. Luckily the old top layer didn't resist too much. After removing it it was time to make the surface even and free of all the glue residues.

After the surface was prepared...

... we tried the fit of the new top layer. It is a 3 mm thick laminate like composite material, and should be very durable. It was a big struggle to get it to fit, since in the boat almost nothing is parallel or perpendicular, so it was difficult to get the right shape and measure the sizes. A friend that we will eternally be grateful took our drawing and the measurements and put it all in the computer programme and printed it out in actual size on a huge plotter, so we brought this blueprint back to the boat and were able to check how it fits. After a few corrections we were ready to go live - actual material was cut with water jet to the shape. Of course it didn't fit absolutely perfect, so we still needed to do some sawing and sanding. You just can't get it perfect without several iterations of sanding, checking the fit, sanding, etc.

And once we were happy with the fit, we glued it to the countertop. We actually used epoxy resin, thickened a bit with some synthetic fibres. Epoxy has a nice habit of spreading itself well over the surface almost by itself, filling possible cracks, and gives you couple of minutes to move the upper part a bit if it is needed. But then of course you have to weigh it down and wait a bit till it hardens. We used all that was at hand as weights, from hammers to electric tools to chains in bucket to cans of paints, winch, pack of newspaper...

This is how the part where the fridge is looked (the fridge lids were not yet finished by this time)...

... and this is the part with sink and the new faucet. The empty space to the left is where the new cooker is supposed to go. The white thing behind the sink is the place where the wet dishes are placed to dry. That thing gave us a lot of headache as well, it was really worn down, and it didn't bother us so much before, but now it really didn't look well among all the other new and shiny things. So we painted it and sanded it and polished it, until we had enough. It is definitely much prettier than before, with more time it could be even better, but at some point you have to stop and start the next project.

One of the most recent things we did is glue together the lids for the fridge. We worked from below - we created a support inside the fridge onto which we put insulation part and on top the countertop with the new surface. This way we were sure everything fitted. And then it needed to be pressed together and to harden.

And this one is already done, and fits the fridge opening perfectly.