Hurray! S/V Blondie-Dog now has her wiring squared away... Wiring the boat was more involved than I had anticipated since all the wiring on-board seemed to be spliced in every imaginable way and wrapped up in spools of electrical tape.
After putting in a full day and then some trying to figure all the wiring out, I finally relented and called the first marine electrician listed on the Marina's approved vendor's list. It was pointless by then to keep banging my head trying to get that wiring properly connected without some direction from someone who knew what they were doing.
Soon enough I had someone out onto the boat from Bo'Sun Marine to check out what I was having to contend with... before long he was pointing out even more superfluous wiring that needed to be removed and explaining ground connections and such and how to test a circuit...
Thirty minutes later after a crash course in basic marine electrical wiring I was diligently grounding my ground wires, replacing excessively spliced wiring, attaching my wire connectors, and testing my circuits with my circuit tester. I proceeded to tightly wrap up my connections with electrical tape and lastly to screw the electrical panel back into place.
It was an effort that took me another four hours or so but the satisfaction of seeing my running lights, cabin lights and deck lights all work and having done the repair work myself, made for a joyous occasion... one that was later rewarded with a few cold ones at City Tavern in downtown Fort Myers.
The twenty-dollar fee for the wiring tutorial was indeed well worth it. I'm just gonna to have to shoot Bo'Sun Marine an email that I got my wiring all squared away and that I won't be incurring any $60 an hour labor charges to fix my wiring. Okay... I'll leave that last part about labor charges out of my email.
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