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Our Tayana 37 galley is a nice U-shape. We like the layout, but most of the systems were in sad shape when we bought Ramble On. It wasn’t a catastrophe, but the stove didn’t work, the propane system was junk, the potable water plumbing was iffy, the foot pumps needed to be rebuilt, and the refrigeration holding plate was leaking and not installed properly. On the plus side, the water heater worked great! But we replaced that eventually anyway.
The propane system on Ramble On was pretty well shot when we bought her. The locker, located in the cockpit, is small and was not vented properly. The propane lines, which were disconnected, were poorly installed with Ts in all the wrong places, and we never did figure out if the stove/oven worked. The oven was too small to fit an average sized cookie sheet and the stove had 2 burners (we wanted 3 burners). The brand (Mariner) is no longer made so if anything were to break we’d be S.O.L. Rich did some research (thanks Tayana Owner’s Group) and discovered that the Force 10 stove/oven we wanted would fit in the opening with only some small modifications to the surrounding woodwork. There was also a propane-fired instant hot water heater installed in the engine room…exactly where the instruction warn against installing it.
We decided to scrap the Technautics holding plate (it was old and leaking anyway) that came with the boat and go with a Frigoboat evaporator plate system. Technautics systems use a holding plate and a water-cooled condenser. Frigoboat uses an aluminum evaporator plate and comes with either an air or keel-cooled system, or both. We decided to go with the air-cooled version with a spill-over fan for the fridge. We will likely upgrade to the keel-cooled system when we haul-out in a year or two.
Our refrigerator/freezer box is small (as are most refrigerators on small sailboats) and the holding plate was bulky and took up a lot of room. The air-cooled Frigoboat system was also about $900 less than the Technautics system. The price in conjunction with the review of the Frigoboat system in Practical Sailor and an endorsement by Nigel Calder made our decision a real no-brainer. Plus, we can upgrade the Frigoboat to keel-cooled down the road, which is supposed to be even more efficient.
We gutted the potable water system including our leaking stainless steel water tank, then replaced it all with this:
We decided to temporarily ditch the pressure pump on the boat and hook the water system directly up to the well water. We were running out of time to get this thing operational and it was easier to do this than to install the new water tanks. We’ll install the tanks sometime after we move aboard. The marina occasionally loses power which means no power to the well pump which means no water so we definitely want the pressure pump as a backup at least. The boat came with three Whale Foot Pumps (two in the galley and one in the head). We rebuilt two of them; the third was cracked and has to be replaced. We’re going to install two in the galley, one for fresh water and one for salt water.
Though it isn’t mentioned above, our boat came with a 6-gallon Atwood water heater. It was located in the engine room and took up a significant amount of space. We considered moving it under the quarter-berth where the batteries are located or ditching it altogether. We researched several smaller water heaters and decided to go with an Isotemp Slim 15 which is a 4-gallon water heater. It fits great under the galley sink and we’ve freed up a lot of useable space in the engine room. It’s connected to the AC system but can also be heated by the engine which we’ll hook up at a later date. Here’s a link to the video we made of the installation.
We finally permanently installed the water tanks. Since the bilge is sloped aft we needed to raise the aft end of each tank to make them closer to level. Rich made some wooden platforms, coated them with epoxy and then affixed them with epoxy to the bottom of the bilge. This will allow the tanks to be closer to level. We needed a way to switch between tanks from the fill port so we installed a Jabsco two-way valve just below the fill port under the port settee. There’s a valve on top of each tank from the suction line to the sink. This allows us to valve off each tank if needed (e.g. if one gets fouled).
We still have to brace the tanks from any movement fore and aft and vertically, but we’ll get to that later. We’ll also need to install two foot pumps at the galley sink, one foot pump in the head and the shower pump.
A previous owner installed a nice Tank Tender system to gauge the water and fuel levels in the tanks. Since we ditched the single water tank to two smaller tanks we had to add a valve to the Tank Tender.
We had manual foot pumps in the galley and the head. Of course we ripped everything out long ago and never re-installed them. We even rebuilt two of the three pump years ago. The third pump was cracked and had to be replaced with a new pump. We installed one foot pump in the head and two in the galley. Only the fresh water pump is operational in the galley right now. The second pump is for salt water and since we’re not in salt water, and we don’t want water from the Delta inside the boat, we haven’t made it completely functional yet.
We also looped the water heater into the engine coolant system. This way we get hot water when we run the engine without turning on the power-hungry water heater.
We found a solid surface supplier in Auburn, California that was willing to sell us a sheet of Corian (apparently it’s hard to get unless it’s for commercial work). The color we chose was Rice Paper, mostly because it was on sale, but it was in our top 3 choices anyway. We bought under-mount sinks for the galley and bathroom wich look super clean with the Corian. Rich fabricated the countertops and cutouts for the lids (refrigerator, freezer, and storage hatch next to the sink.)
This boat has a lot of storage, but there was definitely room for improvement. One thing we noticed right off is there isn’t really a place for a decent sized garbage can. It seems many boat designers don’t plan for this so people hang up a little plastic bag they got from the grocery store for this purpose. Our boat actually did have a dedicated garbage can located next to the sink with a top loading hatch. It was small and hard to get to if you had anything on the countertop and it wasn’t an efficient use of space.
We thought having a proper garbage can sounded like a good idea. We had two little drawers on the wall of the galley island where the sink is, that were pretty worthless. There was a wood box that the drawers slid into in the cabinet under the sink. We decided to rip out the box and drawers and build a tilt-out trash can big.
As for the area where the garbage can used to be, we converted that into storage. It turns out there was a LARGE dead space behind the old garbage can. Rich installed a shelf and now we use that area for storage of dry goods. It’s still not super easy to access since we have the dish rack on top of it, but very few places are super easy to access on a boat.
Another storage idea we’re kicking around is turning the chart storage under the nav station into a slide-out pantry. The space is really deep and would be idea for pantry items since we’re probably not going to have a lot of paper charts. For the outboard side of this space we’re thinking of making a computer/camera/electronics storage area accessible through a door in the bulkhead under the nav station. If the slide-out idea works we might install another one forward behind the port settee. There’s a dead space there that’s big enough and it’s hard to access through the settee.
We did finally install a skinny slide-out cabinet where the paper charts used to be. I absolutely love it. The top shelf holds utensils and the bottom two shelves hold canned goods and other food. The latch at the top is like all the other lockers in the boat and I hope it’s strong enough to keep it closed when we’re heeled over.
We did finally install a skinny slide-out cabinet where the paper charts used to be. I absolutely love it. The top shelf holds utensils and the bottom two shelves hold canned goods and other food. The latch at the top is like all the other lockers in the boat and I hope it’s strong enough to keep it closed when we’re heeled over.
