As with all old boats, the wiring and instrumentation has to be upgraded over time. On my boat a lot of things are original, meaning that they are 40 years old and some items have need upgraded over the years. Unfortunately when the new stuff is installed often the old stuff is not properly removed, so you end up with a lot of redundant equipment and wiring. And of course there are no system or wiring diagrams.
So the first step is to establish exactly what is redundant and generate some accurate system and wiring diagrams. Looking at the main electrical cupboard, it is a big mess. There are wires and hoses going everywhere and nothing labelled. The engine compartments are a similar story.
Tracing out all of the circuits and systems is time consuming but an absolutely essential task. Otherwise it is almost impossible to trouble shoot and sort out problems that may arise.
Bilge pumping
The boat was built to survey and I believe originally operated on the Whitsunday Islands. As a result, the bilge pumping system was very over designed. In addition to the electric bilge pumps in each engine bilge, there was a large engine driven pump with 1.5 inch copper tubing to the bilge area of each of the 6 Hull sections that can be isolated with waterproof bulkheads.
The pump was disconnected and seized, so no chance of this operating during an emergence. As a backup there was also a large cast iron manual bilge pump that was also seized. It is unlikely these have ever been used other than for testing purposes. These all had to come out as they take up a lot of room, significant amount of weight and can never be operational.
After removing the redundant gear we are left with 2 small electric bilge pumps, one for each engine bilge and a larger capacity portable electric pump. Probably a bit light on, but if we have a serious breach, there are 4 sealable bulkhead doors that can isolate the damaged section. May have to look at more bilge pump capacity in the future.
Power cabling
Elimination of the separation between between house and power batteries meant that the switchboard had to be slightly reconfigured. Instead of house and starting battery separation, it become Port and Starboard battery separation. The engines can then be isolated via the 3 way selector.
Originally the shore power fed into a large transformer and rectifier unit to charge the 12V batteries. At some point in time the was replaced by a heavy duty battery charger but none of the redundant equipment or cabling removed.
A lot of old redundant power supply cabling was left still connected to the switchboard, so this needed to be removed. Then an accurate power single line diagram had to be drawn up.
Old redundant equipment
A lot of instrumentation was so old that it was almost unusable.
A 27 Mhz radio in working condition but that frequency is now all but redundant. So no point in keeping it.
A hand held and a panel mount GPS unit look like they have come out of a museum. So no point in keeping those.
The chart plotter is so old that it is impossible to get updated ROM chips for where we want to go. However it does have a good waterproof display of position, speed etc, so worthwhile keeping till we upgrade. Can’t see much point in spending a large amount of money on a new unit as all the navigation information is available on my laptop and mobile phone and is very economical. Navoinics is brilliant in most situations. Electronic charts are also very cheap.
What is working well is the VHF Radio, HF radio, auto pilot, radar, wind speed and depth. Don’t really need much else.
One worthwhile addition is an AIS module. Not very expensive and they can be invaluable out on the ocean, especially at night. Being able to accurately detect ship movements in your area is absolutely brilliant. Knowing the speed and direction of the other vessels makes it much safer.
refrigeration
The boat came with a 2 way (Mains and gas) refrigerator that is in good working condition. Additionally, 2 eutectic units in ice boxes that run from either a compressor off the engine or a separate 240V compressor unit. Neither of these was in working condition.
As we intend to be living at anchor for most of the time on the boat, an eutectic is not going to work well. (operates by freezing a volume of refrigeration solution with a low freezing point inside the ice box, just like a block of ice) No 240V power to run the compressor and don’t really want to run the engine for a few hours every day just to keep the fridge cold. Besides the eutectic boxes take up a lot of space.
So decided to remove the eutectic units and replace one of them with a small 12V dc compressor and evaporator. Easy to install and are very efficient these days. So then we have diversity with one refrigerator running off gas and one running off 12V dc.