The completion of the electrical panel took lots of putting in and taking out, refitting and adjusting. I added three more tee-nuts, because it is better to over-design than to have the whole thing fall off the bulkhead and make a mess. I found the Sikabond 145 Supergrip to be too unreliable in setting and curing, as it seems to need access to the atmosphere, so I resorted to 2-part epoxy to fix the tee-nuts to the bulkhead.
It took some trial-and-error to fit the display panel for the Lowrance fishfinder/depth gauge (I'm not interested in the fishfinder function). I settled on mounting it on a hinged arm that swings in and out of the companionway. This means that it does not need holes drilled into the hull and it is quickly stowed and secured inside the cabin when not in use. The angles took some time to figure out because the axis of the hinges needed to be vertical, but the bulkhead they are fixed to is not. When in use, the panel needs to be face down slightly, to cut down the glare and reflection from the sun and sky. I also needed to ensure that the assembly would clear the trim on the companionway, without intruding into it too far. I gave myself a little slack, in case I replace the current display with another one with slightly different dimensions. I knocked up a couple of toggles from some spare aluminium angle to lock it in the "stowed" and "out" positions. I have now used it several times and it seems to work quite well, though I now wonder if I should fit a hood to make the display more readable.
Once the panel had been fitted, I added the battery. The battery sits on another plywood plate or battery tray that has two square holes that fit over the lugs that hold the rear water-ballast tank in place. The battery tray is not fixed, as the square holes hold everything in place. I also bought a small AGM battery that would fit into the small space available and made up a small box to hold it to the plywood plate. Having taken the battery in and out several times to charge it, this seems a neat and unobtrusive arrangement. When I made up the connecting wire with an Anderson Plug, I made the rookie error of cutting it too short, rather than too long. It seems than, no matter how long you think the wire should be, it always needs to be four inches longer.
After I had taken the photos shown below, I re-routed the wire for the depth-sounder puck behind the headliner, which made it less intrusive than appears in the photos. The depth-sounder puck sits on the inside of the hull under the porta-potti.
I initially fixed the depth-sounder puck with blu-tack, but found it does not make a good bedding-material, probably because it has stuff mixed in that interfere with the sonics of the depth-sounder. I found a better solution was to use a blob of butyl. I had previously used Sikeflex in a previous boat, but the bond was so strong, I broke the puck whilst trying to relocate it.
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| Fitted electrical panel. The red toggle on the lower right leads to the battery, which sits on a tray on top of the rear ballast tank. |
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| Electrical panel fixed to bulkhead |
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| Depth-sounder swung out into companionway |
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