goes the authentic route as he paints 
As they say, slow and steady wins the race. Yes, I'm still puttering with painting up Dreadfleet, while the game has already vanished from the publisher's website...
Last year (!), I painted the Wind Gauge and the ship bases.
More recently, I've moved on to the Navigation Rod (i.e., a ruler with a few joints). I'm not sure what my "design vision" was, I just went with a brown basecoat, tan highlights, a brown ink wash, black ink around the numerals, then gold on the numerals themselves.
I painted the parts separately, then snapped them together. It's a bit shiny, so I might follow up with some Dullcote later.
On to the Ship's Wheels. The box claims there is only one of these, but there's definitely two in the box. These are used to measure ships' turns in the game. I decided to paint each differently, so each player could know which one was "his."
I find that a lot of painting is learned through playing around. I started with a brown basecoat, followed by tan and white drybrushing. I then carefully dropped blue ink into the lower parts of the wheel, and let that dry. I then gave everything a brown ink wash.
Next, I painted the outer parts silver, then applied a black ink wash where the lettering is. Then I just touched up the paint.
I liked how that turned out, so I tried the same process on the other device, substituting red ink for blue, brass for silver, and brown ink for black ink.
For the backsides, I just painted them silver and brass, respectively.