It's done! It's done! It's done! We no longer have a crazy fire hazard on our boat! Yes, the new Blue Seas 3116 panel is wired correctly, mounted, and connected to shore power. It is connected to the charger, and to a new outlet under the nav station that is properly grounded :-)
It was a wild ride to get there, but we got there! We mounted it and got the wires run to the galley and the nav station. We tied them up nicely with wire mounts. We turned off the power and removed all of the old shore power lines and had the new ones ready to go.
We had Planned to re-use the existing shore power inlet... that was where the plan started to fall apart. On removing it and inspecting it, I found the ground tab had corroded and broken - so we did not even have a ground at the shore power inlet...
I quickly ran out and bought the replacement insert and ran back to the boat (well, I drove, but you get my meaning!). Only to find it doesn't fit. I look closer - and there is a small note that if your unit was bought before January 1, 1991, you need a different unit. Of course, mine was, so I quickly called the store and ordered the replacement part - they did not have it in stock so I had pause the project and wait.
Thankfully, the next day was my birthday, so I just relaxed and had fun :-) I got a massage, I had dinner with my family (Cajun grilled shrimp and jambalya! yum!), with a lovely bourbon bread pudding for dessert, and got a call that night that my part was in.
Next morning I'm up and out to the door to get the part and wrap it up - right? Of course not! We did get the part, but the whole assembly is now slightly larger than the original, so we need to cut out the plastic pieces that it sits in - which we don't initially discover (it was close - we thought we could make it fit, but the protective back cover wouldn't screw on because it was too 'thick' - so we detoured and finished the charger and nav station outlet wiring first.
Bean got up bright and early the next morning and quickly used the dremel to cut out the hole just enough to fit our piece, and then we quickly got it together. We of course decided we had to celebrate, so we called it a half day, went shopping for some fun food (beef fajitas if you are curious), and then came back to the apartment to celebrate.
This week I started on the next couple projects - I took out the old galley outlet and measured out the area for the new install (with a proper box behind), and then I started taking apart the boat to figure out how to run the radar wire - still working on thoughts for that one, but I'll keep you updated once I make a decision!
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