True North has 4 underwater lights, which are super fun in clear water at night to bring in sea critters like rays and sharks, or to just turn on and be able to find your boat more easily after sundowners with friends! However, only one of the 3 turned on. Some of the wiring on this boat was obviously not done by professionals so that was the first thing I checked. I found that they had used the white and green of triplex AC wire to power each light and then joined the grounds together. Not only is that super shitty practice, but the ground had come loose and I hate bundles of sloppy electrical tape.
I didn’t want to run new wiring all the way back here, so I left the triplex wire but took the time to redo the connections a little nicer.
Unfortunately, that didn’t fix the problem. We verified that the lights are getting voltage but not turning on. These lights don’t have replaceable bulbs so they’re just burned out and need to be replaced. They’re not cheap, which sucks, but you gotta pay to play and we really enjoy having the lights!
Luckily there was a place in south florida that specializes in underwater lights and in a day or two the replacements arrived!
Today Jason installed the lights in the hull!
Now that the water makers are all wired up, I can use that power supply for the underwater lights! Where the lights are located back in the hull, there’s nowhere convenient to route the wires to keep them off of the floor. I had to add a few zip tie mounts to keep anything we store in here from damaging the wires. I also installed a little bus block instead of joining all the wires together like they were previously.
Now that all the wiring is done (and done properly!) we got to test the lights! They all work and they’re super bright even during the day!
We just got the boat in the water and after a long day of testing systems we were almost on our way out the door finally when Jason remembered the lights and excitedly had me go back inside and turn them on so we could see how bright they were! They cycle white and blue by default. The blue looks really blue, but the white just emphasizes how brown the water here is. (so gross!)
Either way, they work and they’re super bright! I can’t wait to use these out in the super clear water of the Bahamas!