Carol Anderson made me a beautiful Coot burgee. Here it is with Christmas Lights. 
I found this quote from Lindsey Lord, so we decided to make it swallow-tailed instead of pointy: 
I sent her this picture. I think she did a great job translating it.
Thanks Carol!
I’m planning on using an iPad as my primary navigation tool instead of buying a standard chart plotter. To start out, all I need is a $700-$800 GPS-enabled iPad and the $50 iNavX software. I don’t need to buy the cell plan because the GPS works without it. For that price I could buy an entry-level plotter like the Garmin GPSMAP 546 or the Standard Horizon CP300i, both with substantially smaller screens than the iPad and without the advantages listed below.
I don’t like Apple’s ‘closed garden’ business model, but there’s no other tablet on the market yet with anything close to the usability of this setup, and laptop computers are a very bad fit for this. I’ve been using OpenCPN on a netbook for navigating, but the screen is too small, the keyboard is in the way, and trying to use a trackpad in a moving boat, especially in the dark, is really difficult.
There are a number of navigation applications for the iPad, but iNavX seems to have more features than the others. Here’s a short video on setting waypoints and creating a route using iNavX. The US NOAA charts are free with the iNavX purchase, and charts from X-Traverse for much of the rest of the world look reasonably priced.
I found about 20 ways to mount the iPad, but this one looks best so far. The rubber balls should soak up some of the vibration, and it’s easy to adjust, rotate, and remove the iPad. I’ll probably get two sets, one for the dash and another for watching videos below.
Everything in the drawing below is optional, except for the iPad itself. I can add parts as necessary.
Analog-style instruments: 
AIS overlay on chart: 
Track exported to Google Maps: 
Three years ago when I was designing the outboard motor area I used my Honda 45 HP as a model. I made a full-size copy of the motor out of foam and designed the space around that. Since then I decided to use a larger motor – the Honda 60, which is the same motor as the 50 HP, but modified to put out more power. My thought being that a 50 horse motor should probably be about the same size as a 45 horse motor. Not exactly.
The new motor is quite a bit deeper fore and aft, and wider than the old motor. I made the well 18 inches wide, which is almost 4 inches wider than the old motor needed. The new motor only swung about 25 degrees before hitting the sides. It’s supposed to swing 30 degrees. I’m guessing this is a bad thing. To be honest, I kind of planned for this way back when I was building this area – I assembled the sides of the well without fasteners in case I had to cut them down, which is exactly what I’m doing now.
So far I’ve cut out the starboard side so the motor will swing 29 degrees. I’ll finish the cutout this weekend so it will get all the way to 30 degrees, and then do the other side. I was really concerned that I’d end up cutting through the side into the space under the sole, but it looks like I’m safe from that. The finished area is going to look kind of, um, interesting, but I think it should work OK.
Here’s the area we’re talking about. The motor is in the neutral position in this picture. I bought the big plastic protractor and am marking the angles on the blue tape. 
The starboard-side cutout so far. I’ve removed a lot of wood, but it’s not structural. 
And the motor nested into the cutout. At this point it can swing 29 degrees – just a little more to remove to hit 30 degrees.: 
The box the motor came in was huge – as wide as the truck bed between the wheel wells, and so long I couldn’t close the tailgate. They loaded it with the help of three guys and a forklift. I was a little concerned about what I would do with it when I got it home. The motor weighs 250 pounds, and the box added at least 50 more.
I opened up the rear of the tent and realized it wasn’t going to fit in the space I had allocated for it, so I had to dismantle my glassing station , and I took the time to drag the old refrigerator to the dump. The fridge had been used to keep my epoxy warm in the winter – I punched a hole in the side and ran a small light inside. It had worked great, but I was done with it.
I slid the box out onto cushions and a couple of empty kitty litter boxes. The boxes crushed in slow motion when the motor landed on them, lowering the motor slowly to the cushions. 
Inside the cardboard box was a welded steel frame, bolted together. The motor mount was bolted to the frame, and encased in molded foam. A very professional packing job! 
I carefully unbolted everything and moved the motor onto a dolly I made for the purpose – just 4 casters and a sheet of plywood. The motor head is on a cushion . Meryll came out to see if I’d crippled or killed myself yet. 
I went to Home Depot and bought a 12′ foot 2×8 and ran it across the tent above the stern of the boat where the motor needed to go, and made a little truck out of 3 small casters and plywood to ride on top of the beam. Then I rolled the dolly to the right spot and winched the motor up until it was standing up. The motor has 2 steel hanging loops built in, just for this task. 
Unfortunately, the tent is too low for me to just lift the motor over the side of the boat, so I raised it as high as I could and then lifted the lower unit up over the gunnel. I rolled the truck toward the center of the boat, and lowered the thing into place. The lines are just a safety measure, in case the truck spontaneously disassembled itself. 
Lowering the motor into place, I realized the boat was too low for it to go down all the way so I cut out a chunk of the floor for the bottom of the motor to drop into. 
I clamped the motor mount into place and drilled the four mounting holes, the moved the motor out of the way to coat the holes with neat epoxy. Tomorrow I mount the thing! 
I bought the motor last week! I went with the Honda 60HP, high-thrust model. The other main contender was the Yamaha 60 High thrust but the Honda has some features I like more. I also looked into the Mercury Bigfoot, but I couldn’t find a single person who would recommend a Mercury over the other two. It’s a shame, because they sell them at the marina where I’ll be keeping the boat.
50 or 60 HP? Each of these come in both models. They seem to be the same motor, just tuned differently. The price difference was about $400, which is pretty cheap for an additional 10 HP.
I bought it from Maritime’s Marine Center in Ballard (Seattle). They’ve been very helpful so far. It should arrive in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I now have the gauges, shifter, and key assembly so I can start installing them this weekend.
Dashboard is progressing:
The main wiring is laid out very much like the drawing. I need to tidy the cables still:
I’ve got 5 windows and most of the handrails installed. I ran out of brass handrail tubing, so I now have an excuse to go to Alaskan Copper again! One of my favorite road trips.
Some windows installed. It’s already warmer inside with my small space heater. You can see the aft-cabin handrail I put on yesterday. 
These are vertical handrails installed inside and outside, through-bolted to each other. The inside tubing isn’t installed yet in this picture. The fittings are from New Found Metals. 
Windows, handrails, and the vents over the Dorade box openings. 
The front center window opens. The cowl vents open to the internal Dorade box. 
The first porthole: 
Inside: 
Cabin-top handrails:
All the parts are coming together: 
The windows were delivered this afternoon so I installed them temporarily. They all fit perfectly. I really like the way they look, especially the center opening one. They’re very heavily built, with welded corners and heavy glass. I’ll need to pull them off to paint, and can then install them permanently.
These just came in. Two of the largest cowl-making companies have gone out of business lately, so it’s getting harder to find nice bronze cowl vents. These look nice and old-fashioned. From Davey & Company, via GreenBoatStuff.com.
The Dorade box is internal. The arrow in the second image points to the drain hole. Any water that comes in through the cowl will drain out there. The fresh air exits inside the boat through three vent holes. Each hole will have a stainless butterfly vent to close off the flow if needed. There is, of course, a matching vent on the starboard side.
