From what the proprietor of our marine electric shop says, it's not so important how components are connected to the anodes, just that they are. Many or most boat manufactures use a common bond strap running around the inside of the hull and connected to the anodes as a convenient way to connect the various components together. Our GB is like this. But these straps have a bad habit of corroding apart as the boat ages, particularly where they cross the bilge. So when this happens it's common to fix the break with wire or to connect components cut off from the anode by the break directly to the anode with a wire. We have this as well on our boat. On the advice of the electrical shop we also added shaft wipers.
The second school of thought is to not connect throughhulls (assuming they're metal) to an anode at all but leave them isolated. If the boat is in salt water particularly, they will be connected to the anode by the water itself--- electrolysis occurs when two dissimilar metals are connected by an electrolyte. A few shipwrights on the GB forum subscribe to this practice.
But the most common practice is to connect components to the anodes using wire or straps.
Something I learned recently regarding anodes is that it's very important that their connections or mounting hardware be kept clean for the best possible contact. The amount of current is very, very small, so it doesn't take much in the way of surface contamination, corrosion, etc. to block it. So I was told it's a smart practice when replacing zincs to thoroughly clean the mounting bolts, nuts and washers with bronze wool or whatever to ensure a good connection between the bonding system and the zinc. If the current can't get through, the anode can't do its job.
-- Edited by Marin on Saturday 29th of January 2011 11:30:45 AM
