Boat Wiring Tips .

Boat Wiring Tips

Doing electrical wiring on a boat one would be straight forward. Here are a few tips that can help. There is a difference in the wire you buy. The wire sold at a marine store for boats will not corrode as easily. That is the main reason it is higher in price than what you get at a hardware store. 

You need to use crimp connectors to make the connections, not wire nuts. Also use the right size connectors for the size or gage of wire you are using.  They give a much stronger connection when the right sizes are used.  You can also get the crimp connectors that are made with heat shrink plastic. After they are crimped on the wire you can use a heat gun and shrink the plastic so it makes a water proof connection.

If you are using male and female connectors so the connections can be taken apart, put the set on the plus side going one way and the ones on the negative side going the other way. That way you cannot accidently plug the wires in with the wrong polarity. Try to always use the same direction on the sets on the positive wires and the negative wires. This gives you an easy heads up on whether the wire is plus or negative even if the wire become discolored.

This also helps if the lead wires of the thing you are installing have a different color scheme then what is in your boat.  

Use wire ties to bundle and secure your wiring. That way they don’t get damaged as easily.

A Four Knot Life Style

A Four Knot Life Style

Four Knots an hour sailing is fine with me now that I am retired. When you sail, speed is not a big requirement, it is the sail getting there not when you get there.  When you are retired a speed of four knots is all that you need. 

What I have found as I am getting older   {   *-)   }  I have spurts of energy and ambition and then a period where I need to sit for a bit.  I cannot seem to go from project to project like I use to.  I still can get stuff done but it takes longer. 

My flexibility has decreased also and I cannot get into and do things I use to. It maybe the extra 20 lbs. I have put on, that may have something to do with that, but that is my wife fault…she feeds me to well.

If I make a list of things to get done, it needs to fall in a four knot speed range. The finish project dates need to be open ended. I find I have lists for a lot of things. I have a list of things to get the next time I pass a hardware store, and one for food store and one for the sporting goods store and a list of the stores I need to go to next time I go out. I need a better way of organizing my lists though. I keep misplacing my lists. 

I am finding that if I do not have something, I most likely do not need it anyway. Maybe I should start a list of things I do not really need.

When I do get the stuff on some of my list I then need to figure what project it was for o I can put it on my finish up list, if I can find that.

I think I need to sit a bit to get a spurt of energy and ambition.

Tip: Sail Repair

Tip: Sail Repair

Dacron sail material is nasty to work with and sew. It is stiff and slick and hard to keep lined up.

First clean the sail cloth where the seam is going to be with alcohol to get the dirt and any oil off the cloth.  Now you can use double stick tape on the seam track and with the tape you can line up and position the seam where you need it. You can now stich the seam and the tape keeps the seam in position when you sew it.

Varnish Not Paint

Why Sailors Use Varnish Not Paint

If you have a boat with a lot of bright work (wood that needs Varnish or oiled) you will have to invest a big chunk of time to maintain it. With a lot of teak on a boat you need to either let it turn naturally gray or oil or varnish it.

Our boat takes about two weeks to go over all the top side teak. Here in Florida it only take about 10 months before it starts to need attention again. A year or so ago I got thinking that Paint stands up better than Varnish down here and I mentioned to my wife I might paint the wood, not varnish it.

I got the “not on this boat you won’t look”.  All she said was she wanted varnish not paint. I dropped the idea…I still had plenty of varnish anyway. 

Not too long after that we Visited Mystic Seaport and I say a man redoing a small part of a boom that had a discolored worn spot. He was just doing that small spot and he told me the trick was to scrape the area, clean the spot and then add a few layers of varnish starting with the small spot and with each layer expand the area to build up the low spot and then feather it in to the varnish that was good.

I ask: “Why not just paint it and be done with it. It would be a lot less work.  The man smiled and said : “Bright work needs to be varnished not painted to get the Traditional look and for safety”.

One reason you varnish bright work is so you can see the wood. If a crack develops it will discolor and you can see the damage. You don’t see cracks in painted wood. Many varnishes seep deeper into the wood than paint dose and protects the wood better. The paint pigment just stays on the surface and seals the wood. Paint will look better longer, but it hides defects in the wood.

That makes a lot of sense. On spars and booms you want to see problems developing. I do like the look of varnished wood better than paint, and I can see why some things can be painted and some things should be varnished. 

Our boat looks special when the bright work is done. I am glad I decided not use paint. 8-)