New Sink

We've always wanted a sink that that was more modern and a bit bigger than the factory original which, after nearly 33 years, was quite shabby with some bad scratches and dings. Also, washing the pressure cooker and other large pans was a major challenge. Another irritation was the flat bottom bowls never fully drained, always leaving a little standing water. Finally, the faucet spout was too low. Time for a change. 

We bought a twin bowl Scandvik unit from Defender. First lesson learned......... marine stainless sinks are crazy expensive! How can a double sink half the size of a domestic one cost more than twice as much? Anyway, the footprint of the new sink was very close to the old sink, but it had asymmetric bowls. By reducing the outer rim width and narrowing the bowl divider they are much more usefully sized. The small side is almost exactly the same size as the ones in the old sink, but the other is significantly bigger. 

Another nice feature with the new sink is the regular style drains with quick detach fittings that are close up to the underside of the bowls. This is much tidier than the old hose and tee arrangement, makes it a lot easier to deal with clogs and gives us much more room in the locker under the sink. 

Back in 2011 when we converted the ice box to a fridge freezer we also resurfaced the counter top with a Travertine patterned laminate to replace the original white Formica which was quite badly scuffed. We knew that eventually we would do the rest of the galley counters, so we bought enough extra Formica  for the sink and stove areas. It had been stashed under the mattress in the Pullman for the last 4 years. Time to drag it out!

After first disconnecting the sink drain hose we went to remove the sink hold down fasteners.....Oops.......no nuts or washers on any of the 6 pull down studs! 

As seems to have been par for the course for this boat (most Freeports?) (most Islanders?) the sink installation was a cowboy job, no fasteners, just gobs of silicone. So here we are cutting it out, a long and painful process. 

Here is a close up of one of the corner hold down studs.....never saw a nut or washer in its 33 year life!

The mixer faucet was similarly buried in silicone......although it did at least have nuts and washers on the pipe stems. 

Finally we got it out........next step the dumpster.

First the good news! Because the new sink had a very similar footprint to the old one the aperture in the counter top didn't need much adjustment, approx 3/4 inch added to the long dimension and approx 1/4 inch added to the short dimension. A few minutes with the jigsaw and sander and then the new sink dropped right in.

Now the bad news! Because the lip of the new sink was quite a bit narrower than the old one, all the cut outs for the hold down studs were now visible. We had expected to drill fresh holes for the fasteners at the bowl divider, which were no longer in the centre of the sink, but we had hoped the corners would work.....no such luck......we'd have to fill the all six of the old cutouts.  

We decided to get the old laminate off first and, predictably, it didn't go as smoothly as planned. We used the heat-gun-to-soften-the-adhesive technique that has always worked well for us elsewhere but, because the plywood that had been used for the counter top was poor quality, the top ply split and pulled up with the laminate in numerous places. Should have had some penetrating epoxy on the counter top before the contact cement but hey.....it's an old boat right!    

First step in repairing the surface of the counter top was to tape under the faucet holes and then fill them with thickened epoxy. Next we built some little dams with waxed paper and painters tape and then.........

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......then the six cutouts also got the thickened epoxy treatment.

Next step was to get some wood filler into all the splits and tears in the top surface of the counter and..........

.........and finally sand it all smooth and flat ready for the new laminate. Here we are working on the hatch cover, which highlighted another little issue.

The piece of plywood that had been used for the cover was really rough........looked like something picked up from the scrap pile! It almost disintegrated when the laminate was peeled off and needed a lot of Filler, epoxy and TLC to bring it back.

Anyway, lots of elbow grease but finally we were ready for the new laminate. Or so we thought! 








Here we had actually roughed out the apertures for the sink and the hatch and were getting ready to glue it down. At the last minute we realised that because of the narrow lip on the sink, the mid bowl hold down studs were positioned inside the aperture....! 

Here is the problem, all the hold down studs are positioned directly on the edge of the aperture! The 4 corners are OK because there is a generous overhang but the mid bowl ones have no overhang. This meant that we needed to build something to secure them to.  

We used the blank from a 2 inch hole saw, cut in half to create two 'ears' to support the mid bowl hold down studs. We epoxied them in place with small biscuits.  

While waiting for the epoxy to dry on the 'ears' we cut the hole for the new single spigot mixer.

Finally we got the new laminate mounted. We were able to run the laminate trimmer around all the edges except for the outboard edge of the counter top hatch which was so close to the cabinet that we had to use the Dremel.  Visible in this shot is an area where we had removed of veneer due to water damage from the counter. We will be re-veneering and refinishing the whole face of  the cabinet as a later project.

Here we have mounted the new mixer faucet and .........

..........and here is the sink in place. We used a 3/8" x 1/4" closed cell foam strip to seal it instead of caulk. It is the same stuff we used on the Bomon cabin windows and means we can easily remove the sink if necessary. If it's good enough for windows it's going to be OK for a sink.

We were a bit concerned at the strength of the skinny hold down studs (4 mm) but they snugged things down without a problem, although putting the wing nuts on the mid bowl studs was fiddly.

We had to make a little tool to get the wing nuts started.

The last thing to do was to hook up the supply lines to the mixer and the sink drain hose. The supply lines were pretty straight forward. We used 1/2" x 1/2" nipples to splice the mixer lines to the PB supply lines. We plan to replace the PB with PEX at some future date when we replumb the boat but for now these temporary splices will do the job. 

The drain hose was another matter! When we ordered the drain kit it called for 1 1/2" hose, which is what we have, but when we tried to hook it up we found that the stub was 40 mm, which is close to 3/32" bigger than 1 1/2". 

Even with application of the heat gun and plenty of soap, no way could we assemble the 1 1/2" hose onto the drain stub. Even more bizarre was the fact that the stub had both 1 1/2 inch AND 40mm marked on it? Darn Italians, can't take simple measurements. Very misleading specification.

To solve the problem we picked up a PVC 1 1/2" adapter and opened it up a little with the Dremel and a flap wheel. Then we cemented it onto the drain stub and used a hose barb.

The finished job. Now we have to get on with re-trimming and re-finishing the  hatch, the cabinetry and surrounding woodwork, install the soap dispenser, the faucet for the galley foot pump, and.....and......and......