Working with a bad memory

For this little saga to have its full impact, I need to provide some background.
Last fall, we bought new VHF radio on sale, along with remote microphone to mount in the cockpit. I took c areful measurements of the nav station to build a faceplate to mount the radio over top of the SSB radio at the side of the nav station. The old VHF was mounted underneath the nav table which took up leg room and was akward to use.

I built a faceplate in Calgary out of sheet Aluminium. While researching on the best method of preparing aluminium for painting I stumbled onto a whole other sub-culture -- the art of polishing Aluminium [Al]. There are guys who take hours and hours to take Al parts off their cars/motor cycles and with various steps of grinding/polishing turn them into a polished finished that rivals chrome or stainless steel. I tried to mimic it but in my usual minimalist [ i.e. lazy] way and got my faceplate looking 'good enough'.

When Robin and I were on Tatoosh in April I did a test fit and all was well. I put the plate away until I got to the TODO ite m "install new radio"; that happened this week. I spent a day tearing apart the electrical and removing the old VHF, pulling new cables [ a challenge for one person!] and getting reading to install the radio. [ you can see the mess in the photo's]. Then I started to look for the faceplate; and look and look.... i tore apart every storage location. But there was no sign of the plate; and no idea where it is. The only good news was that I found the missing camera cable and now can upload some photos.

Today, I went to Industrial plastics in Victoria, got some black plastic and spend the morning remaking the faceplate. I finally got the radio installed, the remote control/mic in the cockpit and some semblance of order. I still need to put everything back into the nav station and the various cubby holes which needed a tidy/sorting in any event. You can see a before and after shot of the nav station below.

I expect to spend tomorrow cleaning up, putting away tools and putting Tatoosh to bed until July.
I've also uploaded some shots of the new bimini.

Over and out from the boat: it will be good to be on the boat with sailing in mind and not a long TODO list.