New Owner 1997 Mainship 34 Motor Yacht

[newbernbuck]

Hello all, I know the 1996-98 Mainship Motor Yacht is probably not a true trawler, but I thought I might be able to get some help here. If there are any folks that are familiar with this boat I have a few questions about electrical systems.
Mine is 1997 model, has twin yanmar diesels and has been sitting out of the water for 1-2 years.
I used to own an older Mainship 34 trawler, but this newer one seems to be much more complex electrical wise. I hope to launch towards the end of September. Welcome to PM me or email buckloy@hotmail.com
Thanks all
Buck

 

[Cold Duck]

Welcome to Mainship. I have a 1997 MS350, not the same but I have had issues trying to decipher the wiring. Between previous owner mods, added equipment etc after 5 yrs I am still figuring out what they did. And mine is different than my buddies. The Owners manual is little to no value at all so just keep plugging and enjoy your boat. On the MS350 they did install a generic wiring loom so I have found a lot of wiring that doesn't do anything like the wiring to the genset that is not installed. But if you have specific questions, we might be able to help.

 

[rgano]

There is plenty of Mainship 34 and other MS knowledge base here, but just as Cold Duck said, boat wiring gets changed a lot over time, almost as soon as the boats leave the factory. My MS 30 Pilot II was 10 years old when I bought it with apparently not much intervention by the two previous owners, but there has been a heck of a lot of modification by me to make the boat suitable for my use model. When I first started digging into the boat's electrical comparing it to the "manual" I found online, I would have to say the manual was generally useless even with the boat being essential "factory." It took me several days just to get the major battery cabling figured out and another month or so before I had it all wired like I wanted. The rest of the wiring took some more time, sometimes with two people involved to sort things out. Then I committed the whole shebang to a digital drawing.

 

[Comodave]

Congrats on your new boat.

 

[Mainship Pilot]

There is plenty of Mainship 34 and other MS knowledge base here, but just as Cold Duck said, boat wiring gets changed a lot over time, almost as soon as the boats leave the factory. My MS 30 Pilot II was 10 years old when I bought it with apparently not much intervention by the two previous owners, but there has been a heck of a lot of modification by me to make the boat suitable for my use model. When I first started digging into the boat's electrical comparing it to the "manual" I found online, I would have to say the manual was generally useless even with the boat being essential "factory." It took me several days just to get the major battery cabling figured out and another month or so before I had it all wired like I wanted. The rest of the wiring took some more time, sometimes with two people involved to sort things out. Then I committed the whole shebang to a digital drawing.

Yea Rich, I too have added a lot of new wiring and gadgets since acquiring my 2004 Last November. I have been on a roll lately with my label maker, labeling every wire I trace and come across. I replace what needs replacing, and label each wire, and bundle accordingly. It makes the electrical diagnosis that much quicker! Also changing out connections has really helped!

 

[newbernbuck]

Thanks all, I found someone with same model and feel better about launching.

 

[kthoennes]

Ours is a 1996 Mainship 37 "Motor Yacht" and thankfully, the previous owner was a robotics engineer who was meticulous about documentation and wiring. I even have the original full wiring diagram with color codes. Some of the service workers over the years have not always honored or maintained the colors, but most of the colors are still accurate and I correct the colors back to original whenever I get the opportunity. I'm gas, not diesel, but we've owned the boat for nine years so I've learned the boat pretty well. What do you need to know? The original salon speakers are eight ohms for example, and I could go on... I've learned more than I ever wanted to know about that boat. Now if you can tell me what packing size I need to re-pack the shafts, that would be helpful.

 

[Cold Duck]

This last week we came upon another interesting electrical wiring situation with our MS350. We have 3 batteries, the typical bank 1 and 2 in the engine room and a third located under the main stateroom bed for the bow thruster and I thought the windlass. Well, around 3 am we had an anchor fire drill when the winds picked up and we drug anchor picking up about 300lbs of grass on the anchor (in the delta only 10ft deep). Trying to retrieve the anchor the windlass quit. We were unable to lift the anchor onboard and I wasn't about to jump in the water to clear the grass off, so we drug it to a dock and delt with it when it got light. The key here is the windlass didn't quit,after using the anchor numerous times this weekend, the battery died. Well, unknown to me, the windlass was hard wired to bank 2, which I was not using and just kept up for emergency use if bank 1 failed to start engine after a couple of days at anchor. I thought the windlass ran off the battery up front for the bow thruster which was continuously charged. So 5 years owning the boat and I am still finding electrical wiring surprises that just don't make sense. Had I known, I cudda just fired up the generator and the 50 amps pumping into the battery would have run the windlass (which I did later that morning). Don't know if it would have brought the anchor up with the extra grass, but probably would have raised it out of the water. The point is boat wiring is probably different for every boat even versions mass produced like the Mainship. They may be close, but it will be different.