110 Cookson Lane | Whitefield, ME 04353 | 207-232-7600 | tim@lackeysailing.com
Snow Lily | Wednesday, March 20, 2013
I finished up the interior door caning by trimming the excess from the final group of doors.
The next major item on the agenda was the electrical system, both the ship's system and the propulsion system. To begin, I laid out most of the large components that I needed to install, mainly within the electrical locker beneath the nav station, to get a better idea of space requirements and get my thoughts in order. In addition to the items shown, there'd later be a shore power charger and inverter, which hadn't yet been sent my way.
I decided to begin with the compass and depth/speed display for the cockpit. After various measurements, I located cutout templates for these items on the port cockpit bulkhead, and made the cuts as required, ensuring that the compass cutout was below the dropped overhead inside. Afterwards, I installed the two items. Inside, I'd need to build a cover to hide the huge compass hole and the back sides and wiring of the two units.
With those in place, I led the transducer cable and two wire pairs from inside the electrical locker, and made the transducer connections, plus power for the compass light and depth unit. The main connections would later be hidden by whatever trim box I built, but to run the wires I secured them to the bulkhead with white split loom and cable clamps, picking up the two-conductor wire for the port overhead lights along the way. I led all the wires down into the electrical locker behind the small divider bulkhead at the nav station.
Also in this area, I installed the VHF radio on the side of the small bulkhead, convenient but out of the way, and close to the wire chase. I ran the supplied power cables for the VHF through the nearby wire chase and made the connections, leaving slack to allow the radio to be removed if desired.
In order to finalize the VHF connections, I led a coaxial antenna cable, plus two wire pairs--one for the anchor light and another for the head overhead light--into the head compartment near the mast step. Snaking the wires here took some time, with poor access, but eventually I got it done. With no internal access for the head overhead light, I planned to run its conductors up the corner behind where the mast would be, before eventually leading them across the overhead to the light location beneath trim or conduit. The mast wiring would terminate at the base of the mast, for eventual connection to the internal mast wiring itself.
Further aft, I cleaned up and secured various wire runs in the after quarters of the boat, including the AC cable leading to the shore power receptacle, and wires for the stern light and eventual solar panel. In the electrical locker, I began to sort out and make sense of some of the rat's nest of wiring, though there'd be more wires to come.
Total Time on This Job Today: 8 hours
