It had been a job on our to do list for a while, but at last there was no more excuses, so it was time to bite the bullet and rewire our electrical panel.
We were in Carrickfergus and the storms had returned at one point we had 59.1 knots of wind on our chart plotter downstairs and the wind was still rising so we reckon that, that is the highest speed our wind instrument records. With such high winds the pontoon gets a bit bouncy, so going to the shops can be a bit of fun, but we are near one of the main pontoons, so we are happy enough in our slip.
While the weather was bad outside the boat, we cooked Carrick Casserole inside for our sister channel Cooks Tour. So while that was getting on with it I started the task of sorting out the rats nest known as our wiring that was under our chart table. We had wires everywhere, as we had added lights into the bathroom, under the cabinets in the boat, as well as all the extra electrical components, we had added as well. So for this particular task we actually started with creating the plan of the Bavaria 36 switch panel below, because having the plan would mean that we knew what all the switches were for and where they were going in the boat. Next it was a case of making sure that all the wires were labelled and we actually knew what all the wires were under the chart table where we were working.
Next came the creation of a door for the space under the chart table, by having the door, we could mount a variety of bus bars on the door, so that all our new wires would be in an accessible space. We left enough room on the door for another bus bar, because you always need to make sure you have room for spares. It took ages to do and you just need to be methodical. Especially in the testing phase, in our case we had a problem with a faulty earth, but we tracked it down to the accessories earth being connected to the earth of the diodes, which was a different earth to the one we were using. This caused a current to flow through the diodes, which made them light up. So all I did was move the earth of the new accessory socket from the bus bar to the same earth as the other accessory socket and we were done.
