Rig Wiring Notes

Just a couple of pics of wiring for the new rig. I pulled Ancor cable (#158510) from the breaker panel up to the little compartment under the port bench. The cable has 2x 10 guage conductors, 2x12 guage, and 4x14 guage. It took 12 hours to run, as I didn't want to run it through the bilges. Instead I took it up through the bench, along a bulkhead until I could get to the top liner. There's a little lip along the edge of the top liner that's perfect as a wire trough, and goes all the way back to the breaker panel.

I added a common ground bar to the right, but re-used the hot-wire bar.

The heat shrink labels are just great! The black wrapped cables on the right come down from the mast, and the wires on the left all end up in a single inch thick cable that you can see on the left. I still need to tuck it all safely up, and cover the hot block with something plastic.

Now, the VHF antenna was a real pain. I didn't want to run it through the bilges, since it was about 10 feet too short to make it to the radio, and I needed to add cable.
There's no cable-to-cable connector for RG-8U, so I had to solder a plug, barrel and another plug onto it. You don't want a break in your VHF coax in the bilges, so I decided to run it up the starboard side, throught the bench and around the water tank, and up to the nice, safe cable trough at the edge of the headliner. Doing that required pulling the cabin sole back up, and drilling a hole through the liner and into the bench.

All wires have heat-shrink adhesive lined connectors. I used 10g for the Ground, and
the other 10g for the Tri-color. The 12g are for the anchor light and strobe.
The 14g are used for the spreader/foredeck/steaming lights. I don't mind using a bit
oversize wires to limit the voltage drop on some of those essential lights...

Because these are sharp fiberglass edges, I put a length of hose around the cable and ran the hose through the liner (above.) Once the sole goes back down, I don't intend to ever inspect this area again, and don't want this to be where the cable chafes through... The hose runs all the way into the bench.

I didn't want to have to pull the top of the bench off, but that's how things worked out. You know, the welds at the top of the tank leak and I need to replace the tanks,
and as long as I have it all apart....
(NO! DOWN!)

So I ran the coax around the edge of the bench, and through the liner again as you can see to the right. That little space let me snake it right up to the headliner trough, and ta-da! The cable splice is right where I can get at it, above the bench. After soldering the connectors, I covered everything with two layers of thick adhesive lined heat shrink tube, for strength.
No stress will hit the splice.

Here's the actual cable. It's about an inch thick and was a challenge to handle, but I feel really good about having my rig wiring in this protected bundle all the way back to the DC panel.

June 2003 --

I finally got around to putting a cover over the hot block and securing the wires properly.

Note that I like to use the nylon stick-on tie wrap fasteners... But I always stick a dab of epoxy thickened with colloidal silica to hold them fast. Otherwise they come off...