Bow light out

A forum for discussing boat or trailer repairs or modifications that you have made or are considering.
User avatar
dive4it
Engineer
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2011 6:51 am
Sailboat: MacGregor 26X
Location: Salem, Oregon
Contact:

Re: Bow light out

Post by dive4it »

Last week, I put a BWY bow roller on and didn't like the location of the little bracket that came with it for the new placement of the nav light. I opted to put two seperate lights on the sides of the bow, LED of course. It worked great and they are extremely bright. I got them off E-bay for something like $40. I did have to pull half the floatation foam out of the bulkhead to run wiring but after I got finished with the mod, it's a small price to pay in labor (and mess) for the finished product.

Jeff
User avatar
dive4it
Engineer
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2011 6:51 am
Sailboat: MacGregor 26X
Location: Salem, Oregon
Contact:

Re: Bow light out

Post by dive4it »

And of course I put the floatation foam back in when done.

Jeff
vizwhiz
Admiral
Posts: 1381
Joined: Mon Aug 23, 2010 9:48 pm
Sailboat: MacGregor 26S
Location: Central Florida

Re: Bow light out

Post by vizwhiz »

I recently did that with my bow light also (on my S boat).
There is a closed-up section in the front for me too, and I found the white-lamp-cord-to-red-and-black-wires splice up in that area. If the X has that same closed-in space at the very front of the v-berth, that's probably where you'll find the splice. I had to cut a rectangular hole in that vertical panel of the liner, pull out the styrofoam "stuffing" that was behind it - actually baseball size chips of styrofoam (all the left-over pieces?) - trace the wiring from the bilge area (under the front v-berth) up to that light. Turned out that there was a little stub of wire hanging off the bottom of the light that had broken, not the main splice at the lamp cord...was a pain to reach up there to get it, and had to take the light loose from the deck to pull it out and rebuild it.

Anyway, when done, I put all the styrofoam back, and built a nice little wooden cover plate like Sumner did, screwed it in place around the perimeter to cover up my bad fiberglass cut-out job, and it looks great. This is the same area you have to access to get to the back of the bow eye for the winch anyway, so cutting yourself an access port is probably not a bad idea...

As for the wiring down the side, I'm not sure if the liner in the X is the same as the S boat, but there is an overlapping "upper liner" that sticks down over the "lower liner" and has a pretty good gap behind it. Along parts of the boat where the upper liner is not attached to the hull, I can actually pull those apart enough to get my hand back up in there and fish wires, etc. Long straightened-out coat hangers (poor-man's fish tape), or stiff wire like you use in the house, or other types of wire fishing devices can be fished through those spaces to pull wiring in between the hull and liner, in the same space you found behind the chainplate cover. The edges are rough, and it can hurt your hands, but you should be able to flex the parts enough to get access to those areas behind the liner. Also, between the deck and the upper liner, there are "channels" molded into my boat - cable trays, if you will - which all converge in the galley area, or at the bulkhead, etc. You can route wiring from that upper area through those channels to the side of the cabin.

If I've been misled somehow, please do not hesitate to correct me...
Post Reply