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.

Boat Wiring Tips

While walking the dog down the dock to the dog walk area we passed a man replacing his old VHF radio with a new one. He said the old one had to much noise. He was removing wire nuts from the old radio leads and was going to connect his new radio the same way. I told him that wire nuts should not be used and that could be the source of the noise he was getting. I told him I would help him after the dog's needs were taken care of.

I brought back my soldering iron and crimping tools. I told him that wire nuts let moisture get in and the corrosion it can cause gives a bad connection.When the boat moves the wires move and you get noise. I like to solder the connections if I can. Soldering gives a solid corrosive resistant connection. If they can not be soldered, crimp butt connectors should be used. Both types of connections need to have heat-shrink tubing over them to protect them and then liquid electric tape painted over the ends of the tubing to seal them.

I ask him if he was going to interface his new radio with his GPS. He had not planned to and was not sure how to or why it should be. When I told him it was usually just two connections and that doing so allows DSC functionality. DSC gives the Cost Guard your location, identity and boat information automatically when you make a mayday call. We checked the owners manuals and had it interfaced in short order.

He was sure glad he had replaced the radio...the new one was almost noise free, not like his old one and he had DSC, what ever that was.

He thanked me for my help and for soldering the connections. He also gave me a dog cookie, as he called it, for the dog for dragging me past his boat at the right time.