“Old Sparky”: Peregrin’s Decrepit Wiring

Replacing the Electrical System

“From a Little Spark May Burst a Flame”; or, Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire. Over the several years since I have owned Peregrin, I had several circuits inexplicably go dead and several lamps and navigation lights flicker. Also, this past winter I nearly had a fire when a charger wire to the battery’s positive terminal shorted out and became red-hot. I knew that I had to bite the bullet and do a major rebuilding of the boat’s electrical system
Original Scanmar DC Panel	Even though the original Scanmar DC panel on Peregrin had been replaced and the boat had been rewired by a previous owner, the wiring was in terrible shape. The wires from the DC panel were led haphazardly throughout the boat using the shortest path rather than the neatest route. The marine electrician who rewired the boat did some really stupid things such as laying wires in the bilge, bundling both AC and DC wires together, and making splices using non-marine connectors. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
In my estimation, the only salvageable item in the DC system was the recently installed new DC panel by Newmar. But behind this beautiful face lays a danger…look at what is behind this panel!	Aftermarket DC Panel by Newmar This aftermarket panel has 16 active breakers with room for 3 more and has a lit, DC voltmeter. It was made by Newmar, a manufacturer of commercial-grade marine electrical components. Their stuff is top-notch, but it is not easy to find because the big marine stores don’t carry their products. One exception is Defender, which while not a chain sells almost everything via mail order at great prices. If they don’t stock something, they can usually get it, and that includes Newmar items.
Here you can see how many breakers have 2, 3 or even 4 connections per breaker. This is a really bad thing, because each breaker screw terminal was only meant to handle one wire. Some of the wires had vibrated loose so that some circuits operated intermittently while others just stopped working. The DC voltmeter was the first thing to stop working. The “rat’s nest” of wires is bad for many reasons, not the least of which is that it concentrates the heat given off by the individual wires when live. Also, it’s nearly impossible to tell what connects to where. You can’t see them here, but there are several wires just hanging loose in that mess!
Here is a rogue’s gallery of unbelievably bad electrical work. One of the worst was a reading lamp the nitwit previous owner added. When you tilted the lamp even slightly, it would go out. At first I thought it was a bad bulb or socket, but then I looked behind it…					The previous owner was (allegedly) a photographer, and used photo mounting tape to cover his hack-job splices all over the boat. It’s similar to masking tape, which we all know makes a great insulator….! Notice how the lower half of the red tape is darkened from the heat generated by the rotten splice. It’s a miracle we didn’t have a fire!
Now look inside this “splice”. Check out how he connected the two wires together! He just made 2 turns of one conductor around the other (no twisting together of conductors) and covered the whole thing with a tiny piece of masking tape. No wonder this light kept flickering on & off! Here’s the other splice on this lamp:				The dimwit was also in love with duct tape. He used gobs of it everywhere, all over the boat. I was scared to look inside this splice!
	Add a fan? Why not! Well here, lemme just knock a hole in the polished mahogany bulkhead with this here brick, twist them suckers together, and slap on some good ol’ duct tape! Notice the terribly undersized 20 AWG wire!
		More bad splices. Much of the wiring looked a lot like this. Any kind of wire was used to connect to the various lights & instruments on Peregrin, including 22 gauge speaker wire and old extension cords. I knew that the right thing was to rip it all out, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. After all, it did work sometimes! My son Andrei, however, who is a first-class neatnik and a believer in the old adage “If you decide to do something, you might as well do it right”, nagged me relentlessly until one day we just snipped away until most of it was gone. We disconnected the batteries, and just started pulling wires out of the engine room, bilges, wherever we found the little buggers. Peregrin’s electrical system was now officially dead, lobotomized by two pairs of wire cutters…
To be continued…