Throughout wiring the boat we’re guarding against voltage drop – the problem when too small of a wire gauge impedes the juice by excess resistance (heat, if bad). The anchor windlass has a big motor under heavy load pulling spikes of 50 amps so it needs a big thick cable run back to the batteries. BlueSea electrics, and many others, provide handy wire sizing charts based on electrical load and distance. Our windlass circuit is about 50′ out and back, times the 50 amps = 2500 ‘ampfeet’ on the chart, pointing to AWG 2 conductor wire. That’s also the appropriate size for the 15′ circuit from the batteries to the 100 amp main circuit breaker panel. So with about 35′ each of red and black AWG 2, we got busy cutting and crimping.

After fretting over who to bug for big lug crimpers, we finally remembered squirreling away these swaging clamps, and they do a great job with the cable lugs. These two 23′ cables for the windlass added another 7 or 8 lbs to the boat.

Then we have a number of runs between batteries, ammeter shunt, main fuse, the panel, etc. Some of those in process:

Overall the wiring is clipping right along, except that back orders on the many sizes of various fittings are causing lots of stalls. All in good time I suppose. The nav station is coming together with the VHF, the propane controller, a USB port and a cig-lighter style port. The battery switch and windlass breaker got some of those big red jumper cables shown above.

Up on the bow we trial fit the windlass foot switches, which have waterproof housings around their wires, protruding below deck. So they need a pass-thru. Bonding in tubes is a great way to go. These are cheap carbonfiber pieces from Tap Plastics. If the hole is for bolts, use G10 glass tubes for strength.

We’ll show you the windlass switch wiring after the deck is painted and we come back for the final install.
Tomorrow we’ll continue with interior lighting.

Here are hundreds of cell phone lights behind Bruce Springsteen on Tuesday night in Chicago as he sang a tribute farewell to Glenn Fry. We were taking bets on what he’d pick. I won – ” Take It Easy”. Standin in a corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine site to see, it’s a girl my Lord in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me… (You can take it from there :)