Dismay

[Wing Mark]

Most of the boats I looked at had some wiring which could be improved.
Most had some fairly old kit in them, chartplotters with failing screens and ancient charts, dodgy old light fittings, random additions of car audio, some interesting shore power installations.

I don't understand the idea of having all the breakers at the chart table, even when the chart table is as far as possible from the batteries and not near the loads?
You just know that removing that panel will reveal a space crammed with wires.
A simple problem of a circuit not working becomes intractable because the wiring for the stern light is knitted in with the echo sounder and the cockpit speakers.

The boat I bought is pretty simple. Some modern instruments, simple not networked. Basic charging system with a trad 1-Both-2 switch. Engine has its own panel in the cockpit.
Main switch panel has about 10 switches and a lot of red wires behind it. Everything seems to work, except a couple of cabin lights which need to be replaced, but finding a particular wire in that lot would be a challenge.

My car is less than half the age and has twice the electrical issues...
The house is not much better!

 

[DownWest]

Did some work on a Swan 431 and the electrics were all over the place. Ex US, so some 110v and an inverter for that. Nightmare, with lots of wireing dissapearing into inaccessable places. Most of it, just bypast.

 

[LittleSister]

This talk of nightmare wiring reminds me of a trip from Essex to Brittany in a friend's boat decades ago. We were proceeding along the South Coast in the dark when we realised the batteries were near flat, despite having done quite a bit of motoring. As the only one on board with a slight knowledge of electrics I was commissioned to sort it out.

This involved dangling upside down, boat rolling like hell, into the engine well below the saloon table, using a torch to identify what colour wires were attached to what, then comparing and contrasting those to the wires that reappeared some distance away at the instruments and controls. I eventually confirmed that it did not make sense at all.

I knew the engine was a marinised one from a crashed van, and found out the engine part of the van's original wiring loom had been used at that end, and then connected somewhere out of sight below the saloon sole to completely different coloured wires to the instruments, etc! It also emerged, in the course of the discussions that occasionally punctuated my stream of expletives, that some work had been carried out on the electrics in the owners absence since our last trip.

I eventually concluded that the problem wasn't a bad connection or duff alternator, but a complete absence of one or more of the wires needed for the charge to get from the alternator to the batteries! We'd been running down the batteries since we departed a couple of days before. Despite having only a vague idea of how alternators were wired up, I somehow managed to get it charging again. My temporary bodge repair was quite likely still in service when the boat was sold on many years later.

 

[Saint Lawrence Seaway]

...
PS: if you are sorting out the boat's 12V system, a permanently installed/maintained and easily accessible 'temporary/try-out/test' hook up point is a worthwhile addition - heavy cables back to a clean/independent ground and supply (the battery switch is good spot) with an in-line fuse holder (and wide selection of fuses handy to it) terminating at a pair of big chocolate blocks; any problem you throw a meter across the chocolate blocks to test voltage, then hook up to it, if your whatsit now works then it's OK and the problem's in your wiring.

I'm very far from expert in anything sparky, so before thinking about installing any electricals I ebayed a 12v bench supply. It only cost me £13. Now I can test everything (last thing was a borrowed bilge pump) on my dry land test hook-up before heading for the boat. At least I know it works before I get there. From working on old cars, nothing hurts like spending hours trying to get something to work, testing every connection, swapping out batteries etc, only to find out the component itself is dud.

And one of the things I'm going to add is a 'spare connector' on the boat anyway. That's a good idea.

 

[Daydream believer]

When I purchased my boat new the wiring seemed a nightmare. I was concerned what would happen if there was a major fault. I installed a separate set of wires from the battery via a dedicated fuse up to a terminal block in the electric cupboard. The idea being that I could quickly connect the VHF ( a stub wire pre fitted) & the GPS ( a wire suitably laid ready & capped off) At least I would be able to tell where I was & call for assistance if needed.
Over the years I have added items. Some things have used spare wires pre laid by the builder, some I have fitted. I have left several draw wires in place wherever I have installed new wiring. Trying to get it neat is quite difficult so I have devised systems of ducting, where possible, as wire clips just detach themselves from the GRP, letting wires hang down
The hardest problem is getting from the hatch bridge instruments to the switch gear as getting behind head linning can be a nightmare.
I have not linked all my items as I do not want one item to dragthe lot down. For instance, my raymarine autopolit has failed several times . I am on my 7th & my instrumentation has changed from Simrad to NASA to Raymarine with a couple of other makes in between, most having failed at one point or another

 

[Blueboatman]

When I purchased my boat new the wiring seemed a nightmare. I was concerned what would happen if there was a major fault. I installed a separate set of wires from the battery via a dedicated fuse up to a terminal block in the electric cupboard. The idea being that I could quickly connect the VHF ( a stub wire pre fitted) & the GPS ( a wire suitably laid ready & capped off) At least I would be able to tell where I was & call for assistance if needed

That is smart thinking

 

[V1701]

What you see is par for the course. When old boats were built electrics were rudimentary and inevitably owners take the line of least resistance when adding new gear. This is what I am faced with in my latest acquisition. Amazingly everything works. However will be ripping out and starting again at least for the battery installation, but will keep most of the house circuits and just replace the old switch panel with space for additional circuits.
View attachment 126759

Quite, and I know you know this already but for others' potential benefit, removing all those individual connections from the battery and fitting positive and negative busbars and a switch panel if there isn't one already is big improvement. The wires to the individual bits & pieces distributed throughout the boat can be replaced as & when assuming they still work. From a safety point of view if nothing else this sort of thing really shouldn't be beyond the wit of anybody who sets off to sea in a boat and might have to troubleshoot their electrics a bit somewhere along the way...

 

[mattonthesea]

Like others I inherited a complete nest. It took me two days full time to work out what and, perhaps more importantly, why they were there.

I cleverly designed two faults into the reorganisation. One is that I have 18 switches (several spare for future proofing) in three rows. I bought a couple of 10-split distribution boards with bus bars and fuses. The top row of switches matches the first six fuses and bus bar positions. Except that the bars are in two rows of five.

So the sequence goes:

Switches:
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18

Bus bar:
Board1:
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
Board 2:
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18

Fuses:
Board1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Board2:
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Logical but takes a bit of tracing wires, particularly as several of my carefully labelled stickers have dropped off.

The second design fault is that I mounted the distribution boards at the back and the drop down switch board at the front. As I completed the latter wiring I realised that the board connections were becoming less and less accessible and less visible!

Add to this that the steaming and deck lights are switched through the negative - not ideal!

So it is not a mess now but I wouldn't want to be looking at this for the first time.

 

[Wing Mark]

When I purchased my boat new the wiring seemed a nightmare. I was concerned what would happen if there was a major fault. I installed a separate set of wires from the battery via a dedicated fuse up to a terminal block in the electric cupboard. The idea being that I could quickly connect the VHF ( a stub wire pre fitted) & the GPS ( a wire suitably laid ready & capped off) At least I would be able to tell where I was & call for assistance if needed.
Over the years I have added items. Some things have used spare wires pre laid by the builder, some I have fitted. I have left several draw wires in place wherever I have installed new wiring. Trying to get it neat is quite difficult so I have devised systems of ducting, where possible, as wire clips just detach themselves from the GRP, letting wires hang down
The hardest problem is getting from the hatch bridge instruments to the switch gear as getting behind head linning can be a nightmare.
I have not linked all my items as I do not want one item to dragthe lot down. For instance, my raymarine autopolit has failed several times . I am on my 7th & my instrumentation has changed from Simrad to NASA to Raymarine with a couple of other makes in between, most having failed at one point or another

I think about 25 or 30 years ago I raced on a boat which had a separate little battery for the VHF? I have the impression it was a requirement for cross-channel races at the time?
A bit later, I raced on a boat which had a separate little alarm battery supply the GPS through some diodes, because early GPS sets would sulk for 10 minutes when starting the engine caused the volts to drop.

These days, a small 12V lithium pack could back up some essentials.
Although in reality, my phone has yet to lose contact with the shore and knows where I am!

I want to add some stuff to my boat, but I am thinking along the lines of keeping the chart table switch panel for 'essentials' and putting other stuff elsewhere. Things like charging for phones cold be in the aft cabin. Shore power battery charger likewise? Fuse panel for stuff like the heater and non-essential lights? Solar goes straight to batteries, with maybe a volt meter else where?
The tillerpilot could have its own circuit, almost direct from the battery, so less cable loss and if wheels start coming off, the tiller pilot can work when most other things are disconnected?

Also in these days of LED lights, some cables could be thinner and hence easier to manage in a loom?

 

[Daydream believer]

Although in reality, my phone has yet to lose contact with the shore and knows where I am!

Here on the east coast I often lose contact ( Iphone-O2) when well insight of the coast- Possibly 5 miles at the most. I would never trust a phone for navigation, although many do. Just seems an unreliable medium to me. Plus I would have great difficulty seeing anything of detail on it as well. I just cannot understand how people can rely on them

 

[Daydream believer]

When I bought my last boat the cables had lovely clear numbered & coloured rings on them.
In the current boat Hanse had place zilch, so whenever I added anything I tried to use different coloured cables. One day I added Dyno lables to the cables with all the names printed. 3 weeks later the labels were all laying in the bottom of the cupboard. Actually they were rather large & not very neat so not a very good idea.
So a better solution with the numbered, coloured rings would be good & a chart saying what they were would be the answer perhaps
What do people use for identifying cables?

 

[BobnLesley]

Here on the east coast I often lose contact ( Iphone-O2) when well insight of the coast- Possibly 5 miles at the most. I would never trust a phone for navigation, although many do...

Losing signal's not always a detriment to navigation. We had the mobile phone navigation technique widely recommended for transiting Australia's east coast: To stay in the favourable ocean when current heading south - remain far enough offshore not to receive a mobile phone signal; when heading north, stay close enough inshore to maintain your mobile phone signal and you should get some help from the coastal 'back-eddy'.

 

[Daydream believer]

Losing signal's not always a detriment to navigation. We had the mobile phone navigation technique widely recommended for transiting Australia's east coast: To stay in the favourable ocean when current heading south - remain far enough offshore not to receive a mobile phone signal; when heading north, stay close enough inshore to maintain your mobile phone signal and you should get some help from the coastal 'back-eddy'.

Australia is one hell of a detour, when travelling from Bradwell to the CIs though

 

[PetiteFleur]

When I fitted new batteries a couple of years ago, I made sure I labelled all the wires leading to the components I knew about. Still I'm not sure about some plus several 'dead wires' which were removed. I use a Brother printer originally bought for plant labelling with uv resistant tape but now resides on board...

 

[Stemar]

Losing signal's not always a detriment to navigation.

Absolutely. With a live subscription to Navioncs, you can download the charts you want before you go, and your phone is then no different from a "proper" plotter. The screen's too small, but so are they on "proper" plotters. Get a half-decent tablet in a waterproof case and you've got the screen size you want for way less than a plotter. It won't suit everyone, but if you're on a budget, I reckon it's the way to go.