Robert

Congrats on the boat and welcome. We've consolidated our cooking utensils to some key pieces that work for 99% of our usual menu's. Pots and pans in the drawers under the sink, trays and serving items in the port side aft cabinet behind the settee, and utensils in the drawers beside the sink. Toaster, roasting pan in the dry food locker next to sink. To address low lighting in area’s I have a flashlight and headlamp at the ready on shelf over the nav station.

We have a nice set of nesting stainless pots/lids that go in the drawer under the sink along with a cheap pan/lid and folding dish rack. A teflon pan goes in the oven along with a wood cutting board (had to cut an inch or so off the plastic handle to get the pan to fit). Cooking utensils in the top, flip open drawer.

I don't have a light in the passage forward; I learned to duck my head after hitting it enough times ;) But you might want to consider one of thoses cheap stick up LED lights. I have one in the head and aft cabin for those not used to the boat, and they last forever.

Enjoy your new boat, and welcome.!

Welcome to the forum Robert! You will find that it is so helpful in so many ways.

The admiral and I lived aboard [COLOR="DarkOrchid"][B][I]CARPE DIEM[/I][/B][/COLOR] for over six months and it's truly amazing how you learn to utilze the space aboard a boat. In fact, one of my next books is going to be on tips learned from live abaords. To begin with, we discovered that an electric skillet came in very handy (that's if you have 120V). We store most of our cooking utensils directly under the cabinets in the galley. I installed a wine glass holder to hold them upsidedown under the little shelf in the galley. I aslo built and installed another cabinet on the bulkhead adjacent to the companionway.

As far as lighting I installed a battery-operated, motion detector in the head and we found that minor addition was a big hit with everyone who used the head after dark. I too, have purchased a number of those LEDs that Gary mentioned. They have certainly improved them over just the past couple of years.

BTW, our hull number is 1865; which tells me that you boat must have been the last 36 that built by Catalina in 2000 and mine was the very first one in 2001.

You are right about the boat being a stable vessel. We love sailing her here in North Carolina!

Our pots and pans are the Magna nesting which are kept in the big drawer under the galley sink, utensils are on the slotted shelf behind the stove. As for lighting in front of the v-berth we currently don't use but have purchased the LED light fixtures sold by Catalina Direct, about $50us, currently in the head and above the stove in the galley.
Mike

You could consider hanging them in the rigging, not bad as radar reflectors and the racket may keep birds from roosting on the boat.