S/V Deep Playa - Pearson 424

I’ve mostly been working on the rigging lately, but tonight I’m thinking about the NEMA 2000 powertap installation. The Maretron powertap looks like a normal NMEA 2000 T but it has MID\Micro cord coming out of T which you wire up to the DC power system in your boat along with a 4amp fuse (See yellow powertap in the picture). Maretron has a good knowledgebase article on how to do the install but in summary you wire a couple of wires to the 4amp fuse and DC +and the rest to DC –.

I have some other DC wiring I need to clean up that is wired directly off the batteries with no fuses and I don’t want to use a bunch of inline fuses, so I’m going to use a Blue Sea Fuse Block to fuse all these individual items, but do so in a way where I have a single spot to do troubleshooting and add-on future circuits.

I’m hoping to pick up the fuse block tomorrow so I can put in the T which is the first step to getting my NMEA2000 instruments online.

More checks from the 4thof July 3 day weekend:

• Dr LED Kevin spreader lights wired and functional. They need to be aimed to point at the proper deck area still.
• Cleaned up a lot of stuff. There has been a lot of extra tools and supplies on the boat. Some of it is extra gear we will sell at the next Fisheries Swap Meet, the rest of it was recycled, trashed, or now at the workshop. We have some ash lumber for doing battens if you’re interested in that let me know. We also have a not-straight 1-1/2” bronze prop shaft that could milled down into a smaller straight shaft I assume.
• Took a ride around the marina in the dinghy on oar power. Dawn loves to be rowed around like a princess.  

Checks from this week:

• Mainmast wiring completed !!!  Fly me to an aircraft carrier; Mission Accomplished!! This was huge. I can’t tell you how many WEEKS I’ve spent working on the wiring in the mainmast to have everything working feels awesome!!
• The following are now all functional: Aquasignal Foredeck & mastlight (aka steaming or masthead light, OGM LED TriAnchor (Tricolor, Anchor w\ photodiode & Strobe)
• The TriAnchor is absolutely awesomely bright. I walked around the dock and it was absolutely the brightest thing in the marina including all the lights on shore.
• The DC breaker board is labeled properly. I used white P-Touch labels for this, I eventually (read maybe never) want to pretty that up.
• Every DC (+) wire in the wiring closet is now properly labeled. I love my P-Touch (we call it a Pea-Touch) Industrial Labeler!!
• Chris Tutmark did the initial tune on the rig.
• Put the outboard on the dinghy and took the Dinghy Princess for a ride last night. The o\b fired up on the second pull after sitting on the stern pulpit all winter with no winterization. Yamaha is the awesome!!
• 2011 WA Vessel Registration sticker affixed
• Dawn painted the interior wood around the portholes in the head & shower and put the trim back up as well. Just need to re-attach the drip rails which she sanded and polyurethaned.

Lots and lots of stuff completed… many many pics to take and then some write-ups on some of the systems, how I installed things etc.

Before – just a bunch of holes and messenger lines for pulling wires.

After

Notice the tangs for the main loweres, spreaders and the new foredeck\steaming light. That wire sticking out is the feedline for the new spreader lights.

This weekend the weather was nice and we actually made some progress.

Boat side, Dawn check off some good items:

• Starboard water tank scrubbed, by hand, through those 4”-6” access ports. No she is not available to help on your boat !
• Finished painting the hull areas under the chainplates
• Sealed the deck core where the chainplates  go through the hull
• Started sanding the chainplate cover plates

WHEW ! Dawn is awesome!!! All of this is in preparation for installing the chainplates which will be weather dependent, but something I hope we can do next weekend.

At the yard, I was able to make progress on the mast wiring:

• Finished mounting the foredeck\steaming light
• Finished mounting all of the tangs on the masts
• On the spreaders:
  • Mounted the padeyes and flag halyard blocks
  • Pulled the wires through the spreaders for the Dr. Led Kevin Spreader Light

The general wiring strategy has also made a bit of progress. The spreader lights are going to be fed from a single in-mast feed line. The wires in the spreader will be soldered to the feedline, shrink wrapped and supported by a line\wire (TBD) that will span the connection. This will put the weight bearing back to the wire and not the soldered connection. The lights will be connected to the line inside the spreader with a disconnect so if the spreader ever needs to be removed it can be done without cutting the wires. *gasp*

At the masthead I’m pretty much ready to start wiring up the masthead light and the VHF. I only need some grommets to protect the wires where they exit the mast. I’m still not happy with how I’m planning to mount the Maretron WSO100 Weather Station which is so massive I’m actually thinking I’d be better off returning that and going with the Airmar PB200 which is not wide but is taller. The problem I’m having is how to mount this without adding 20lbs of stainless to the masthead and not blocking the nav light significantly.

So, while we still have a lot of portlight rebedding in our future this weekend we made some great progress… feels good!

Since I wrote the last post I was thinking about how to pull those damn wires. I was able to pull one of the wires tonight. I used the messenger line to pull the wire to the exit in the conduit and then I used a second messenger line that I pulled from the masthead inside the mast to pull the wire out of the conduit and up into the mast. This took a bit of time and I had to use a stiff wire to pull on the wire as it exited the conduit. I then used the original messenger line to pull the wire back out the proper exit hole in the mast. Very slow going, but I think I’ve got a strategy to pull the other wires now.