…with the electronics project.  Today was spent cleaning up the installation in the nav station and then pulling new cables through the aft end of the cabin and up into the binnacle (by the wheel) for the other three units.  All was going exceptionally well until…wait for it…the hole in the stainless steel base plate from the binnacle where the instruments mount, down through the cockpit floor was too small and the cable wouldn’t pull through.  The only option was to completely take apart the “cage” around the binnacle that the cable needed to go through in order to get routed under the deck and drill it out.

All the crap is out of the lazarette so I can cram myself in there. You can see the steel protector cage for the binnacle laying on its side and the cable on the floor of the cockpit.

There's no going back once you cut the end off the cable! But it's the only way to thread it through some of the tight holes.

Not recommended in the installation guide (which was written by the lawyers)

I won’t bore everyone with the blow by blow description except to say it was a typical boat project and didn’t want to come apart.  Two hours later, some penetrating oil, some banging, swearing and lots of pushing, pulling and tugging and it finally came loose.  Once that was done it was fairly easy to pull the cable down through and under the deck.

Then, while sitting inside of a 3 foot, by 2 1/2 foot by 3 1/2 foot box (i.e. the lazarette under the cockpit), I finished the wiring part of the job.  Strip the ends of 10 tiny wires (somewhere around #20 or smaller), tin the ends of each of the tiny wires (with electrical solder), crimp them onto ring connectors and then attach them to a “bus bar” and the cabling part of the project is done.

I couldn’t quite finish because we were going out to a birthday dinner for one of our dockmates (Happy Birthday Charmaine) and I ran out of time, so the final install is tomorrow.  But, I did temporarily attach an instrument to test it and it works!!

So, over $2000 of new electronics that I bought on a hope and a dream that I could get it connected (without having to spend $100/hour for a tech to tell me the nightmare scenario- that it wasn’t meant to work with my old system) is actually working.  The bonus is that it works much better than the crappy B&G system (professionally recommended by and installed at Svendsen’s in Alameda, CA) ever did, even when it was brand new just four years ago.

I think I’m going to sleep well tonight.

P.S.-For a break for those of you who are tired of hearing about boat work-here’s something a little different (click to enlarge photo)…

We only buy our eggs from happy chickens...;-)