Moving On Board Plus Odds and Ends

So, as those of you who know me on Facebook may already know, I've received permission from Shilshole Marina to live aboard SKOOKUM.  Live aboard status is pretty hard to come by in Seattle, so I'm really excited to have been granted this opportunity.  Here are a couple of photos of my new neighborhood!

This is the dock leading up to my slip.  I'm all the way out at the very end.

I have an amazing view of the mountains, which you can just barely see behind the boom of that sailboat at the very end.  I'm going to be pretty exposed to the weather all the way out at the end of the dock, but I'm also going to be right in the middle of some really amazing nature.  Birds, seals, and sea lions like to congregate at the breakwater just 30-40 feet from my spot, and the views are going to be spectacular!  This is going to be really good!

Odds and ends.

One small item that has been on my list is to replace the throttle and transmission controls.  They were of nylon plastic and they just look shoddy.  Take a look.

The transmission is the black lever to the left of the compass, and the throttle control is the brick red (supposed to be bright red) lever to the right of the compass.  Here is a photo of the fancy new stainless steel controls!

They look so much better.  Another reason (besides aesthetics) that I wanted to replace the controls was because the transmission control is really tight and I was always concerned that the plastic would just break when I was trying to do something technical like dock the boat... which could be REALLY bad.  Eventually I'll need to take a look at the control lines to figure out whether something needs to be replaced or lubed to make this work smoother, but for now at least I know it's not just going to snap.

Finally, in preparation for moving onto the boat, I've come up with a dish drying solution.  The galley sink is a two basin sink.  So, I'm thinking that if I could just come up with the right mechanism, I could wash dishes in one basin, and rinse/dry in the other.  Here's what I've come up with.

Each sink will have these white mats in them.

If I flip one over and place it on top of the other one on the drying side, the feet will work for plate dividers.  Pretty slick huh?  Then, for the day to day, I'll just leave them both in to protect the bottom of the sink and/or whatever I happen to toss into the sink while under way.