Hello friend.
My ‘69 32 is on City Island, still in the cradle through this weekend, if you’d like to come by and have a look around and chat. I’ve owned her since 1991 (not nearly as long as Kerry has owned his!) and have done substantial structural work, most documented here. The 49-year-old boat is no showpiece but it is structurally solid, sails as well as it did when she was new, and every single thing works. I have a natural aversion to complexity and the associated maintenance so I do not have a speed wheel throughhull, masthead electrical wind speed indicator, radar, chartplotter, air conditioning, watermaker, anchor windlass, or generator. I do have DC refrigeration, pressure water, a large inverter, a large alternator on the Atomic Four, and a 110V water heater that gets lovingly winterized every fall that but hasn’t been used in years.
On the electrical side, you can see from Kerry’s diagram that the factory configuration ran wires directly under the mast step. This was a poor design decision and over time it led to the disconnection of my port side cabin lights. I found it necessary and preferable to run parallel cabin light wiring up the port side via the engine compartment. This rare poor design has really been my only gripe with the electrical systems on the boat. What exists now is not the picture-perfect meticulous looming that newer boats have, but it is compulsively labeled and, I think, understandable to anyone motivated enough to figure out what is going on.
After running that extra cabin light wire, and some other stuff for the bilge pump and float switch and a stern-mounted VHF antenna, the channel running from the engine room up to the port side cupboard where the VHF and bilge pump switch are located was stuffed full of wires. In recent weeks while adding an AIS receiver and associated doodads I discovered how useful it is to run wires in the overhead, from the starboard side cupboard, forward and around the sliding hatch channel, and back to the port side cupboard. That path now carries wiring to power any port side instruments, a coax VHF cable split from the main (port) VHF for the starboard AIS receiver, another coax cable split from the port VHF for the starboard FM radio, and an NMEA data cable delivering GPS to the port VHF. Getting access to this cable path required removing the frame trim under the main salon hatch, which I had replaced a year ago without reinstalling the trim.
Just some ideas as you’re rewiring. Here’s my suggestion though: what is causing you to spend the time rewiring the whole boat instead of just replacing wires you find objectionable?
Like you with your brother, my son and I have had many hours of enjoyable time together working on our boat.
