Sailboat Refit – Testing and Wiring

The main batteries for the house bank on the boat are backordered, but we finally bought the start battery for the engine. Now that we have a battery to use, Jason rigged it up to an old charger so we can keep it charged from an extension cord and use it to start testing the DC 12V panel on the boat and see what all is broken!

Nice charger. Too bad we need a different one.

We started with the lights. Half work and half don’t. I think it’s probably the fixtures, so we left that for another day. The shower sump in the master bathroom works. The next thing we tested was the desk wash down for the anchor… it did not work. We verified that the power was getting TO the pump, but the pump wasn’t turning. Since this is a saltwater system it was likely enough that the pump was just seized so we took it off to investigate.

Comes on this nice panel with a check valve and pressure switch.

Part of the problem was that the pump sucked up one of the sponges that people shove in the openings when the boat is out of the water. that definitely impacted flow.

Check valve with a pressure sensor and relay.

Pressure sensor is a little crusty. I hope it actually works.

The vane and blades were pretty crusty. Lots of broken internal bits.

The pump and valve setup is actually really expensive, so we decided to order some repair and upgrade parts. But since we have to wait, this project is on the back burner until they come in.

Keeping on with the testing, we then tested the shower sump in the aft head… it was dead. Didn’t even try to spin! After trying some “percussive maintenance” (didn’t work) I ripped it out of the hole it was in so we could poke around and see if we couldn’t get it going again.

This is a diaphragm pump with a very disgusting strainer.

The washdown pump loosened up and worked after a little bit of messing with it. We cleaned it up and put it back where we found it. After that Jason and I moved to the main panel. We realized a while ago that the AC panel was pretty messed up. It had provisions for the generator and air conditioning that the boat no longer has AND the previous owner had gotten in there to do who knows what with it. So it was pretty obvious that we needed to get in there and assess the situation and simplify the panel. This meant that I got to sit there in the moldy electrical nook while Jason got to peer awkwardly on his feet over the nav station table to get to the panel.

I removed so many breakers, wires, and internal bits…

The white things will be removed tomorrow.

Believe it or not, this is BETTER than it was!

We got a TON of work done today! We got an early start because it was raining and we couldn’t go for a morning walk, and then we were on the boat until at least 3:30… I’m tired!

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