All the 2/0 cable throughout boat... imagine if you will an un air conditioned vessel, sitting in the tropics for 20 years... you really get to see what actually happens to untinned wiring. A nice shade of green indeed. Lots of internal corrosion. Recall that Daydream has a mere 1300 hours on her main engine so we are not talking about heavy use. I was skeptical about resistance until I was shown an equal run of tinned 0/2. 25% or more in the untinned. I’m now a believer. Literally all the battery cables, all the main lines from gen(s)... all the pilothouse feeds... the main engine room panel... in short... definitively in 1982 ALL the wiring is untinned. It’s now up to snuff. This entire project started with a wierd smell while watching TV one night... if you don’t know what shorting wires smell like... you get really jumpy and start slinging all your switches to off position. Next morning I slap down the ole main panel and discover a breaker burnt and swollen to half again it’s size (engine room light circuit). So I disconnect and pull it to only discover that it’s impossible to get a similar 1982 circuit breaker from ANY source... I mean Marine salvage: nope, eBay: nope, trawler forum: nope, internet: nope. I’m still thinking this is an easy fix with a replacement breaker modded to my main panel. I now start flipping switches back to on.. holding my breath... I flip the battery charger breaker to on and the whole boat loses power. I’m scratching my head when I notice Everyone in the marina coming out of their boats... turns out I blew the entire dock. I hastily beat a retreat to switch off the offending breaker... they recycle the marina breaker, I have everything powered on except the batt charger breaker. I call the marina electrical guy... he comes to boat scratches head and announces “you got a bad charger”. He disconnects the charger, flips the breaker and poof the dock blows again. Further head scratching ensues... he basically says “I ain’t never seen nothin like it”...
I begin asking around who’s the best Marine electrician in Tampa Bay and Get hooked up with CJ... one look and he says “you got a main line short, Its inside the paneling and begins chasing it down (remember everything else in the boat still works).... after cutting through the panel on top of the engine room wiring panel, he discovers the melted wires... he then tests the 1982 breakers in the main panel for correct trip voltage... (surprise, NONE of them trip... they merely start getting hot.). Dr. CJ looks at me and says:
1. Your boats got 35 year old breakers, your wiring is all untinned with mass resistance, your battery charger is toast, and your boat can’t hook up to the Marina pedestals because you have an antique plug that trips their system... and oh yeah, don’t go swimming around your boat because your discharging into the water....
20k later I have a rewired boat, a spiffy electrical management system and a new blue sea panels.
God help those that live classic boats. But by gosh I have an electrical system the envy of any nuclear submarine.
Rick
