Electrical nightmare ( sort of)

[Captain Anthony]

It appears that my 1980 Tartan 37 has been wired and rewired and maybe rewired again by a few good intentioned Do It Yourself electrical engineers. Wire runs all over, no wires are marked. I want to make the vessel safe for cruising etc. Other than ripping everything out and starting over, what are your suggestions?
What are the benefits of an "electrical survey" who should be a good candidate to preform a "electrical survey" and how do I know if the surveyor is within the ballpark as for pricing the survey?
Any comments here are appreciated.

[Bycrick]

If you truly believe, in your heart-of-hearts that your first paragraph describes the situation accurately, then you will be way ahead in money, time and worries if you rip it out and start over.

To do the project in pieces, you need to:
1. Identify every piece of electrical equipment on the boat.
2. Trace every wire from end to end. Check every connection. Every splice. Every inch to check for damaged insulation or other problems with old wires.
3. Decide if the way they wired it 40 years ago is the way you want to do it using the pieces that are available today. Things have changed a lot since 1980.
4. Pull out all the old wires that are damaged or unused. Do the same for the switches, terminal blocks, fuses, breakers, etc.
4. Then start pulling new wires, installing new connection points and circuit protection, as required, labeling the new wires. Then label all the old stuff.
5. Test it all to see if some of the old stuff has failed while you were working around it and that the new stuff works as intended.

At that point, you have some new wiring that you can use with confidence and some maybe 40-year-old wiring that may fail tomorrow.

Or, you can:
1. Decide what electrical equipment you want, some may be old, but that’s fine. Decide where you want it located.
2. Decide how you want the electrical system to be when you’re finished. You can ignore the state of the old system.
3. Pull out all the old stuff. Run the new stuff. You now have plenty of room to run new labeled wires, to new connection points.

I helped wire a 45’ boat in the same condition as you described. The owner drew a diagram of every light, fan, plug, etc. Decided which to keep, or throw away, or move. Decided where to put the fuses, circuit breakers or switches. Pre-assembled all the battery wiring, switches, fuses, shunts, bus bars, on a piece of plywood. On a Saturday morning, we cut out and removed every piece of wire on the boat, with the exception of a few that were part of the navigation system. By that evening, all the major, critical stuff was back in and working. Sunday was spent hooking up the fans and lights that we didn’t do on Saturday.

She’d spent almost a year planning how to do it, buying all the necessary pieces, shipping it from the US to Panama, drawing diagrams, making all the labels. Three days to actually do it. That was five years and one lightning strike in the past. It all still works, as designed, with zero failures.

Good luck.

[Davo1404]

I had the same problem with my 1972 yacht when I bought it in 1994. Failure after failure. In the end it was a no brainer to remove the old wiring and the switch board. I installed a BEP board with circuit breakers. Ran new & heavier cable to the board. Then ripped out all of the old wiring. A big job but it was mainly labour intensive crawling through small spaces. I also upgraded to led lights. Make sure that you use tinned cable. This was done in 2000, no issues since.

[alamoana]

Many of us have been there; and we all came out sort of fine. Start with a small area, I suggest batteries, and alternators to a large enough bus bar for the + and -. Use the correct fuses and cables and then you hook up everything else to these bus bars. Then add as you learn. Good luck!

[chris mac]

I'm in the same situation. 3 owners added lots of lights and bells, jury rigging to adapt to new toys, ect. None of it was ever removed.
I was quoted 80,000 usd to rewire the boat! Not an option.
So I have been removing any wires not hooked up, or connected to any obsolete items. Lots of tracing and work, but I'm getting to know the systems much better. Any wires that look worn are getting replaced, one by one. It is definately taking longer, and probably won't end up being much cheaper, but I get to do most of it in a tropical Anchorage instead of a boatyard.

[Bycrick]

If you need panels for circuit breakers, switches, etc., don’t just decide to buy somebody’s pre-made panel and then modify things so it fits. Check <front panel express.com>. Design exactly the panel you need, exactly the right size and shape, with all the holes cut the right size and in the right place, with engraved lettering. You’ll save yourself hours of time over trying to make your own panels. The last time I used them, I needed a simple panel with 8 circuit breakers. But it was an odd size, breakers oriented horizontally, so no place to label them. FPE made the panel, in anodized aluminum, with the lettering above the breakers, but slanted 60 degrees so everything would fit. About $110. A stock panel for 8 breakers was almost $50 and I’d have to modify the cabinet work and make custom labels.

[moseriw]

Boat owners destiny ;-)

[Scubaseas]

What Bycrick said. On my boat with three previous owners who had the best of intentions but paying zero attention to codes or methods, it was/will be easier to just rip out anything that is non factory and do it over per ABYC standards. I started tracing what is there but quickly realized people added things over the years but never removed any wiring for the equipment they took out. The "horror" pictures you see in surveys bears a close resemblance to many, many items on my boat. There are rats nests of wiring, little if any supports, 120V next to 12v on the main panel. No fuses many places there are supposed to be, sharp edges without grommets or clamps, etc... And of course there are only four color of wire used. Red/black Anchor (OK and good, tinned stuff if the right gauge) and a lot of white, green and black non tinned and no specs printed on the wire, probably salvaged from old dock cords.

Do yourself a favor and look at the several ABYC videos that are available on line. If for no other reason than to know what to expect.


I would think you would want to hire someone with ABYC certification in electrical systems to look at and give an opinion on your boat if a regular reputable surveyor recommends it. Not all surveyors are fluent in electricity but most should be able to recommend someone who is if needed. Most surveyors will be able to tell you what is right and what is not. Many will be able to opine a rough price and make suggestions as to whom to hire. If it's non factory wiring be suspicious of it. If it's factory look a the connectors and wire for corrosion but the factory stuff is probably OK and may not need much work.

Fixing the wiring is labor intensive but not hard to do other than a lot of boat yoga may be involved.

[Bycrick]

WRT your quote of $80k, the rewiring job on a 45’ sailboat that I talked about had a budget of less than $6k including all cabin lighting, nav lights, bilge pump wiring, all new fuse blocks, buss bars, remote operated battery switches and three custom made panels.

[Thumbs Up]

As long as every wire is fused you are going to be fairly safe. Upgrade the AC power in to a ground fault main breaker. Many of those wires that you see probably are not being used. If you have anything that is connected straight to a battery, at least add an inline fuse. It is nice if the wiring behind a panel doesn't look like spaghetti but as long as everything has the proper fusing will be fairly safe. Tight zip tied bundles of wires look nice behind a panel and give the impression that everything was wired correctly but is mostly cosmetic. If you need to trace a wire it is easier if it is loose. Try to make sure that battery and starter cables plus and minus are not running next to each other or create a conduit to keep them separate. I am guessing that pretty much everything works as is. I am sure that it can be prettied up without ripping it all out. Installing LEDs in every light fixture as well as LED nav lights will lighten the demand for power. Make sure that higher demand and voltage sensitive stuff have heavier gauge wire (vhf, refrigeration, autopilot etc.).

[Cheechako]

Are you capable? Save the survey money and get to work. DC12 is simple stuff.

If the various wires are good wire. Then you can make your self a good long test wire with alligator clips and start identifying wires by checking continuity at each end. many you wont have to do that by testing them. Then ID the wire with a numbering system on the wire ends.
Evaluate everything in the process. Pull additional wires if necessary. Bundle nicely and install good waterproof ends on all the wires.
Re evaluate the scheme before doing so.
-Where should larger wires/cables and busses end to distribute to smaller wires? What makes sense?
-Is a smaller panel for certain items better located away from the main panel? Maybe aft for Refrig, Bilge Pumps, autopilot etc?

On an old Trawler I bought I was going to remove all the huge bundle and run new wiring, then decided it was being anal to do so. I simply removed all ends and re used the wire. ran a few more and made a couple mods. I ran a large cable closer to the panel eliminating a bunch of wires.

[Scubaseas]

Captain Anthony,
Have a look at https://marinehowto.com/ and consider buying crimpers and other products from him. He deserves support for his excellent website.


Get a copy of "Spurs Guide to upgrading your cruising sailboat" and/or Nigel Calder's "Boatowner's Mechanical, Electrical Manual."


Get a copy of ABYC E-11 which some find dry reading.

Any of the above will help you have a better understanding your boat, what's right and what's not. The object is to keep all the smoke inside the wires. If you let the smoke out stuff won't work.

Take some pictures and post here for opinions.

[LingeringFox]

Same disaster when I bought my catamaran, in 20 some years, in between leaks and unknown diyers, it was a nightmare.
I haul her out and started to test, check and replace wires.

2 months later, I ripped everything out, nothing was worth saving

If it's really that bad, save yourself time, design your ideal electrical installation and start fresh with the big power cables.



A bit of advice:
To quickly test a single wire, you need two people, one on each side

To rip a single wire, you need two people, one pulling, one routing

To run a single new wire, you need two people, one pulling, one pushing


Bottom line, don't do it alone or be prepared to work very long frustrating hours for very long months...
I know, I did !


Good luck !

[Time2Go]

Having wired many TV studios here are some tips
Engineer and draw out everything in advance
create a wire run list
generate a parts list
pre-fab as much as you can
If you are pulling out wires tie a “ messenger”
to one end. Will make pulling new cables easier.
Go to youtube and watch
“Pacific Yacht Systems “ videos
Lots of great insight
Cheers
Neil

[LingeringFox]

Invaluable tip, Time2Go, messenger is the best invention since 🍦