GroupWBench

As of today, we are 90% done with the rewiring of the boat. All that is left is the wiring to the bilge pump and the anchor light at the tippy top of the mast. The highest and lowest points on the boat. We've gone from this:

To something slightly better organized:

Everything run nice and neat and labeled clearly so we can figure out what is what. We replaced all of the light fixtures with LEDs and replaced all of the wiring in the boat save the two up the mast. I'll replace them if we ever pull the mast for work. We labeled all the wire runs:

We put all the wiring into split loom tubing for chafe protection, ziptied it all down every eighteen inches or so, and then screwed the zipties to the boat. The wire shouldn't be chafing anywhere now. 

We built a nice little platform for the batteries and screwed it down real tight. Then we added a tie-down strap to hold the batteries in place properly. That meant our ground cable from the batteries was too short, so we had to replace it. We put in a shiny new electrical panel and new ground and common hot bars. I made a ton of crimps and heat-gunned shrink wrap connections. All in all, it went very well. When the final connections were made, Ivy and I held our breaths and flipped the switches on…Nothing happened. It took a few minutes, but I realized I was missing one little thing – the ground wire from the batteries to the panel. Once I got it in place, everything lit up and ran great. Whew.

The new anchor light wasn't tall enough to actually be above the sheave mount at the top of the mast, so I had to buy some aluminum to build a small riser for it. Now, I just need a not too cold or bouncy day to zip up the mast and stick it on. The bilge pump goes directly to the battery and bypasses the main panel. I have the tangle of wires all in place, I just need to figure out which goes where and crimp them down. 

That was a big big job that required advanced boat yoga positions and much mess. Ivy had to squeeze into the anchor locker to run the forward running lights. I spent forever folded up against the engine down in the basement under the cockpit. Not a fun job. I'm glad to see the end of it. 

In other news, we saw snow here last week. Holy crap, Batman! It isn't supposed to snow down here. That in an affliction belonging to people up north of Dallas. Sheesh. Fortunately, It only lasted about twelve hours. We were in shirt sleeves the next day.