If you look closely, you can see the throttle and shift controls along with a pedestal guard, brake and compass cylinder that I have added. All are made by Edson. I have also ordered a smoke plastic dome cover to protect the compass, but it has not yet arrived. I used 11 control cables from these controls to the outboard with Mercury adapters. The cable length can be between 8 and 11 feet and work fine.

See Electrical controls and guages

This is the location where I placed the electrical controls and guages. From the left, there is a 12volt convenience outlet, a running hours metter, and the ignition switch with an electrical push-to-choke feature. The largest guage is a tachometer. Below it is a low oil pressure warning light and fuel guage (I added a permanent 11 gallon fuel tank under the helmsmans seat). The tachometer and fuel guages light bulbs are connected to the stern light circuit for visibility at night when needed.

See Outboard connections

The first cable on the left is the accelerator cable with the shift cable next to it. These run to the steering pedestal. The next four cables that are tied together consist of the engines positive and negative leads, the oil pressure cable and the main wiring harness. The wiring harness has an 8 pin connector that allows me to break the connection outside the boat in order to remove the engine. The engine leads and the oil pressure cable enter the boat through a single waterproof plastic and neoprene wiring connector that can be removed to allow these wires to be disconnected inside the boat and easily pulled out for removing the outboard. Next is the attachment arm point for steering with the fuel line to its right.

See Steering Connector side view

This is a photo of the steering connector from the rudder hardware to the outboard attachment point. The connector was made out of two hydraulic steering ball-jointed rods with the ends cut off. I then put them end-to-end and made them into one with a short piece of 1/2 inch rigid copper tubing that I placed in my vise to make it oval, matching the steering arms shape at the point where they had been cut. Tapping the rods into the copper tube with a rubber mallet, I made them secure by drilling and installing two 10-24 stainless steel screws and locknuts in each of the rods. I finished the job by using adhesive-lined heat shrink to cover the copper tubbing and screws. Closer-up pictures of the attchment points follow.

See Steering arm top view

Looking down, you can see where the steering arm connects to the rudder hardware and the outboard.

See Closeup of rudder attachment point

I attached a 3/8inch stainless steel bolt to the rudder with nuts and washers above and below. I had previously cut off the head of the bolt, rounded the top edge with a belt sander, and drilled a hole for a cotter clip.The connector can be left in place even with the motor tilted up. However, it only takes a couple of seconds to remove from the rudder when the outboard is not needed so that it isnt constantly being turned from side to side with rudder movements while sailing. The outboard does have a friction lever that keeps it from flopping around. The outboard I chose is a 4-stroke Mercury big-foot Sailpower with a 25 inch long shaft. I had to remove the tiller and convert it remote control to use this way.We launched the boat for the first time Saturday. The outboard remote controls worked great and made the boat highly manueverable even at low speeds. Unfortunately the boat itself failed miserably in that it didnt pass the most important test of all - it didnt float without leaking. That problem was completely unrelated to the outboard remote modifications and will be posted separately. Since I had promised pictures of this modification to an earlier poster, I wanted to get them out since I have already benefited many times from the posts of others. I hope this is useful.