Way behind on posting. Went to Maine, came back and been buried in the details ever since. As the build progresss the pace of decisions has picked up quite a bit.
A lot of time was spent on adjustments to the galley upper cabinets to accommodate the microwave and acheive the proper asethic. Two somewhat obscure factors, a 1" reveal (area of wood between the top of the cabinet door and the underside of the deck) at the aft bulkhead, and the height of the microwave, were pretty much the determining factors for the opening of the dish locker, height of the top of the nav station and height of the electrical panel. At least if we wanted to maintain a consistent line throghout without out a lot of bumping up and down. After several days of back and forth we acheived what we hope
will be a very consistent and pleasing line from the aft bulkhead in the galley all the way through the nav station. The cardboard above the galley counter shows the previous plan, and the green string shows the revised design. Much of the change was to make sure we could easily get dishes into the dish locker so we would never have to dry a plate!
The electronics are also starting to be introduced to the mix. We spent some time on the layout of the switch panel on the starboard side of the companionway. This panel will control all the on deck lighting, cockpit lighting and navigation lights.
On the port side of the cockpit we're creating a "watch station" which will have the radar / chart plotter, remote microphone for the VHF radio, and a remote control for the autopilot. The cardboard mockup shows how the radar / plotter will look in the "up" position, the VHF microphone and autopilot remote will mount just inboard of the display. The whole thing will drop down into the deck when not in use. This unit will project into the space above the inboard counter in the galley, so we're working on pushing it further inboard and making it a little shallower to reduce the impact on the space above that counter. A 1" adjusment in one direction, 2" in another, pretty soon we've spent six hours to move something a couple of inches. That's how the days go in Thomaston.
I'm now spending a week of each month at Lyman Morse in Maine and probably even more time in April as we get ready to hit the water in May. After three years of this project being mostly an abstraction on paper we will soon have a real boat in the water!
