Galley Upgrades
While every cabin on Totem is part of the refit, changes to the galley crept up on us. At first, we focused entirely on nondiscretionary needs. The Force 10 we installed in 2007 was on its last legs, and was not practically repairable. The laminate countertop installed in 2014 in Thailand was wearing through enough to expose particleboard—that had to go. Jamie fell through dry-rotted stringers under the sole—looks like that would have to be replaced! Discretionary updates crept in, easily justified. The new stove’s geometry would let us reclaim precious inches of workspace at the forward end by rebuilding a cabinet, turning it from skinny to functional. Then, when pulling off the laminate—why not just pull the whole countertop and reimagine a better use of the storage spaces below? That engine compartment (the whole inboard side of the galley) needed to be gutted for the new Beta anyway. It wasn’t long before the only remaining part of the galley we weren’t tearing into were the lockers along the port hull—and it had always bothered Jamie how when they were rebuilt in 2014, they weren’t to his spec, leaving yawning portals to unrealized storage. Suddenly we were looking at our galley as a near-rebuild, not a few fixes. But a love for cooking and eating well, and no additional time cost to the haulout, made it easy to embrace expanded plans. The first splurge was a Gn-espace stove. This Uk-made “cooker” is a rarity among boat ovens—it’s actually insulated. This means baking in the tropics without heating the boat, and vastly more efficient use of propane. I can’t wait to hone my sourdough skills from the tropics! Countertop material has been the hardest to settle on. For months, installing quartz—a manufactured product from stone powder and resin—was the plan. But it’s too heavy: not because of the weight overall (we determined it to be about the same as having another person on board), but the heft needed to lift the slab for refrigerator access, or a large square to reach the garbage can hidden beneath. Solid surfacing was our second choice, but there isn’t an installer/fabricator or supplier in this part of Mexico—and it’s not a material we’d like to tackle as amateurs. We decided on bamboo. Strips of the grass bonded to form a slab creates the lightest-weight countertop among all options (save laminate), with the benefit of being relatively thin—an asset because we seek to avoid adding height. The environmentally friendly option feels and looks good. Cabin-sole replacement has been a trickier proposition than expected. We could never match the teak and juniper elsewhere on Totem; attempting it would look awkward. Casting for options, we initially chose recycled rubber tiles, but Jamie and I kept returning to memories of the cork flooring we loved in our Seattle kitchen: It is comfortably resilient underfoot, handles traffic well (hiding grime from toddlers and dogs), and is a renewable material that we can feel good about. Finding glue-down tiles intended for use in high-moisture settings (such as a bathroom… or a sailboat!) settled the choice. Finally, there is literally the kitchen sink thrown in. With new counters and fresh finishes everywhere else in the galley, that 1982 sink was going to look pretty out of place. Jamie jokingly refers to our new sink as “The Bathtub.” And while the household size might be inordinately large on a sailboat, it fits, it has fantastic utility with nested cutting boards and drainage, and we know from our prior use patterns that we’ll appreciate the capacity.