Rewiring success

This is the place to post your ideas, thoughts, questions and comments as relates to general boatbuilding and reconstruction techniques and procedures (i.e. recoring, epoxy, fiberglass, wood, etc.)
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Contest31
Bottom Sanding Grunt
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2023 10:30 am
Boat Name: High Time
Boat Type: 1972 Contest 31

Rewiring success

Post by Contest31 »

Just wanted to say Hi, and show my recently accomplished rewiring of my Contest 31. I'll try to attach pictures in multiple posts.

I have a 1972 C31, made in Holland, and it had the original wiring in it, which had been crudely added to over 50 years, but never cleaned up or repaired. In short, the sort of situation that a lot of people find when buying an older sailboat. Many of the labels were in Dutch, many were incorrect, many switches were unlabeled, many didn't work at all. Total chaos.


All the wires came in to the panel area from the right, and terminated on a strip on the left. None were of course labelled. I had to initially flip switches and see what did what, and label all the wires. Then I literally cut everything out - scorched earth.
w1.JPG
Attachments
w2.JPG
Last edited by Contest31 on Wed Feb 08, 2023 11:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
Contest31
Bottom Sanding Grunt
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2023 10:30 am
Boat Name: High Time
Boat Type: 1972 Contest 31

Re: Rewiring success

Post by Contest31 »

This boat had a nice, well sized and constructed heavily built panel area as you can see - solid ply backing glassed to the hull which was ALMOST big enough for the two terminal strips - I screwed them to wooden slats and screwed the slats to the backing.
w3.JPG
This next photo is pretty much as it looked when completed. You can see the terminal strips. The wires weren't finally organized into neat bundles yet, but it's 99% done. I put negative and positive busses in and used two Blue Sea panels. By waiting a couple of weeks, I was able to get them from Amazon at fire sale prices - every once in a while they will show up cheap so grab them fast. The normally $190 panels I got for $120 each.
KIMG1194[5553].JPG
It wasn't a complete rewiring job - I still have to replace some components like the 12v supply coming from the batteries, as well as rewiring the mast, VHF antenna, etc. but I put heavy wire under the sole and ran it to the panel area in preparation for that.

Everything works perfectly and althought it took me a week to do it and cost a few hundred dollars in wire and parts, I understand it completely and can add to and repair whatever needs to be done. I considered having an electrician do it, but estimates started at $1500 and went up from there.

As far as "how did I learn to do it" - I quickly got disgusted with all the "how to rewire your boat" videos on Youtube. None of them - NONE - will tell you how to do that. It's the same with books - I read Nigel Calder and Don Casey and learned all about equations and theories, but none of them had clear useful diagrams that I could turn into work on my boat.

The only video that was helpful, and the one I watched literally 30 times and learned 99% of what I needed to know, was the Atom Voyager video on 12v rewiring of an Alberg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PofFOg9H_6Y I'm here to tell you, there is more useful information in this video than you can believe - freeze frame things, take photos with your phone, make drawings, but if you are rewiring a boat like most of us have here, this video is solid gold. Thank you James.
Last edited by Contest31 on Wed Feb 08, 2023 11:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
Contest31
Bottom Sanding Grunt
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2023 10:30 am
Boat Name: High Time
Boat Type: 1972 Contest 31

Re: Rewiring success

Post by Contest31 »

Everything has been cleaned up and I'm starting to install the foundation strips and busses.
KIMG1180.JPG
Here you can see the negative and positive busses in place.
KIMG1190.JPG
And the final panel as it stands now.
KIMG1193.JPG
Contest31
Bottom Sanding Grunt
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2023 10:30 am
Boat Name: High Time
Boat Type: 1972 Contest 31

Re: Rewiring success

Post by Contest31 »

I'm going to add the inverter that James recommends in the video - that large round black thing on the plywood cover is the switch for that.

You can see the cascade of wires coming down on the right, mainly for the cabin lights. I was going to remove them and replace all that as well but this boat has a solid fiberglass headliner and I'm just not going to cut it out. Not gonna go there.

The panels are all now fully labelled, no blanks - and these panels gave me plenty of space to add things in the future as needed. I did some overkill on the 4 USB and cigarette lighter plugs you see on the left, but I wanted plenty of clean power for tablets for navigation, recharging flashlights, handheld VHF, etc.

I have a really simple wiring setup - in case it's helpful I'll list it out:

2x 100 watt Renogy rigid solar panels with a 30 amp Epever charge controller (the Renogy controller burnt out - literally started melting. Not happy about that. The Epever is solid metal with huge cooling fins and doesn't even get warm.)

cabin lights (about 8 LED overheads)
refrigerator (runs off a cigarette lighter plug)
stereo
VHF (Standard Horizon with AIS)
4x accessory plugs - fast charge USB's and another cigarette plug)
bow red/green nav lights
stern white light
interior fan
depth meter

In future I'll add mast wiring, new high gain VHF antenna cable, a bow flood light, maybe a couple others. No chart plotter or radar. No power water. No electric windlass (I have a Lofrans manual).

Hope this is somewhat helpful. This was a daunting task, one that had my hands shaking just thinking about it, but it's very doable.

I also highly recommend the informative videos put out by PYS - Pacific Yacht Systems - a professional marine electrical company in Vancouver. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... ms+youtube Jeff Cote makes more videos than anyone can watch and they're extremely helpful. For one thing, just seeing how fast an electrical fire happens is really sobering. It should be called an electrical explosion.
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