Mocking up the galley

Last weekend we worked on the galley mock-up and now have the layout pretty much figured out and appliances located. The blank spaces under the temporary counter top will be filled in with base cabinets. For the uppers, we ended up making the test layout out of cardboard, which is the way to go when figuring out an arrangement like this. We are happy with the results and I think that the layout will work really well for us. The long overhead cabinet running athwart-ships divides the galley from the sitting area forward without closing the space off completely. Looking forward to getting the cabinets in. Also did a little plumbing, mostly on the sea water intake manifold. This is made up of all bronze pipe fittings and is bolted to a flange on the stainless sea chest. One thing I've learned from hanging around commercial shipyards is the importance of isolating dissimilar metals that are in contact with sea water. The combination of two different metals that are far apart on the galvanic scale, conductive with each other, and immersed in salt water basically creates a battery that can very quickly destroy the less noble metal. To protect against this, the dissimilar metals need to be isolated from each other. In the case of the flange connection pictured, this is accomplished with a good thick gasket, and non-conductive sleeves and washers on the hardware connecting the two flanges. Once the connection is made this way, a quick test with a meter shows that there is good isolation between the Stainless and Bronze flanges. I'll probably add a sacrificial zinc anode to the manifold too for good measure. After all that work, it was time to watch a dvd on the new tv in the aft cabin. She is starting to feel like home.