Sometimes you have to wonder what a previous owner was thinking. I am prepping the O'Day 25 and so far I am happy with the overall condition she is in. The bottom painting went well, Brenda is making good progress on the new cockpit cushions and the material is here to recover the interior cushions.
Today I got started on the wiring which I knew needed some cleaning up and some new circuits added. I installed a new 4 circuit panel with breakers to power the 12 volt outlets, stereo, bilge pump and new anchor light. The first three circuits went in very nicely, but I ran into a PO (previous owner) roadblock on the fourth circuit. There wasn't any wiring installed for an anchor light when we bought the boat. I knew this, but it is normally an easy job to run cable through the mast and install an LED all-around light at the masthead.
I ran the cabling from my new circuit panel through the boat and up to the mast tabernacle. Next I simply needed to pop off the masthead fitting and the mast bottom plate to run a cable for the light inside the mast. The first sign that I had a problem was when the peanut styrofoam started blowing out of the now uncapped mast. They flew all over the yard in the breeze. Once about a foot of the mast emptied out I could see that a PO had FILLED the entire mast with expanding foam. I understand some people like this method of keeping the wires from slapping the insides of the mast and making a racket, but there are better ways to do the job. If you just use an occasional wire tie with the tail left on it secures the cables very nicely. The foam does a great job as well, but there is no way to run new wires or replace any defective ones once that foam sets ups.
Hopefully that will be the only major obstacle I'll run into as I prep the boat. Brenda and I really would like to get out sailing pretty soon.
Posted with Blogsy
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