So
there I was, lying butt deep in an anchor locker with only my legs
below the knee out on the v-berth. Scattered around were the various
tools of the spark chaser's trade; side cutters, wire strippers,
crimping tool, drills, screwdrivers, splices and connectors. Hanging
from under the foredeck was the freshly installed windlass motor, a
task that took days longer than anticipated. Unanticipated was the
need to hack away part of the under-deck to make the motor drive fit,
the need to fill multiple holes left over from the old windless, and
the need to repair other holes just left over from who knows when for
who knows why. That work required suiting up in the full tyvek rig,
hood, gloves, mask, glasses; then grinding fiberglass, laying new
glass, filling, smoothing, rough sanding (it is the inside of an
anchor locker after all) and painting. Stuff normally found in the
glass slinging manual, not the spark chaser's guide to happiness.
With
the windlass motor finally hanging in place, the tyvek suit could be
laid aside. Making sense of the typically amateurish wiring diagram
that is the marine industry's idea of information, and getting the
wiring straight became the next task. Required in that wiring mass
was a 5 amp fuse to protect the control circuit. (The motor /
windlass itself runs on a 150 amp circuit carried by #2 wire; stuff
that is about ½ inch in diameter. Fun to work with lying in a tiny
anchor locker and working over your head.)
And,
right then, the strangest thought crosses my mind, “Why is the fuse
holder and its wiring black?”
Every
fuse I have ever installed goes in the hot side of a DC circuit. The
hot side is red, red wire, red rubber boots on the connection
studs...red. Black is ground. (Or yellow if one is working on a
boat.) Fuse holders and the wiring should be red.
Stupid
thing to think about stuffed in an anchor locker wiring up a
windlass. Then I thought, “Well, if one doesn't know that a fuse is
in the hot side of the circuit, regardless of what color it is, one
probably shouldn't be in an anchor locker wiring up a windlass in the
first place.”
Two
stupid thoughts in less than a minute. Not even close to a record for
me, but I'm going to claim that the heat may play a part in sparking
such fruitless musing. By 0900 temps in the areas we are working
hover in the mid 90s. Stuffed in small holes or working on a boat in
the sun will see triple digits for most of the working day. It is
enough to fuzz up anyone's thinking.
I
puzzled over such silliness for a few more moments, then got back to
chasing sparks. There are a lot of things needing wired in this boat.
There are 1200 amp hours of house batteries, two start batteries,
dual shore power plugs, a 4000 watt inverter / charging system, bow
thruster, water heater, five pumps, two entertainment systems (one
audio, one TV), two engine harnesses, lights (salon, v-berth,
cockpit, helm, navigation, head, spot, and underwater), trim tabs,
autopilot, and navigation systems. (I still call them “avionics”,
which amuses Boss New.) There is a big cooling fan in the locker
holding the inverter so said inverter doesn't cook itself to death
turning DC into AC, a few connections to make the stove work, and the
head uses electricity to flush.
There
is no real good idea how long this is going to take. Wiring up a new
boat with new stuff is one thing, and I am sure it chews up months of
the build time. Wiring up an old boat with new stuff is another
thing. For various reasons, wiring runs for the old stuff will not
work for the new stuff, assuming they exist at all. Bow thruster,
inverter / charger, and underwater lights are new systems never
before seen on this boat. Getting all of this wire to where it needs
to go often means installing new conduit runs, some of which need to be glassed in place. Don't dump the tyvek suit just yet. (For the
initiated...bow thruster and inverter will require roughly 140 feet of
4/0 wire be run somewhere. Yee Haw!) All things considered, my guess
is wiring up an old boat like this takes about half again as long as
it would take in a new boat.
All
listed out like that it gets a bit overwhelming. (One of the reasons
I don't like lists.) But each day is just another day's work. It is
the kind of work that (usually) makes a day go by at a good pace. I
rarely find myself wondering if the day is ever going to end though,
sometimes, looking back on a day that is just ending it feels like it
went on forever. The heat again.
It
would be a lot more fun to write about anchoring in the Islands or
exploring parts of the Keys we haven't seen yet. But that isn't what
we are doing right now, Deb is turning Kintala into a very well-founded boat.
