cross posted to rec.boats.building

hi all,
im hoping to install a trolling motor on a 14 foot beach cat, for those
interested, a local australian design the 'caper cat'. There is plenty of
reserve bouyancy and ctorage space in the hulls. The rough plan is to go
with two 75Ah AGM gel cel batteries, one in each hull. The batteries are
totally sealed and can be mounted upright, sideways or upside down, so im
not too worried about flying a hull. Ill need to mout the batteries somehow
in the hulls so they dont come lose and damage the boat.

im going with a trolling motor because as you'd expect, its wet wet wet on
this boat, and ive already wrecked a couple of outboards. im hoping the
trolling motor will survive the water. the other advantage is its readily
available when needed, ive had a lot of trouble starting outboards in rough
conditions. being quiet is a nice plus.

im not too worried about all the controls, and was thinking of removing the
control panel from the outboard and chopping it down to a simple motor on a
bracket that i can easily flip into the water, and a simple directly wired
forwards/backwards switch with a fuse.

Any thoughts/advice on this? what sort of switchwear/wiring do i need to go
with, considering that its pretty much going to need to be submersible.
anything i can do to make the motor more robust? would sikaflexing any
joints help?

Shaun