Boy have you been busy!
Great work on chasing things down and trouble shooting!
Good catch on the drilled ballast hole too!
Q: Did you check for other holes that the PO bolted or screwed into the ballast tank wall?
——- (Betch he did
)NOTE: Epoxy patch worked just fine on polyester resin fiberglass BUT polyester resin DOES NOT WORK ON EPOXY!
Probably the best thing to have in your onboard Emergency Kit is some stick type Underwater Epoxy Putty and/or a variety of rubber plugs or other similar materials to plug small puncture leaks.
(Personally I prefer the Under Water Epoxy Putty as it adapts to whatever “IS CONDITION” one might be faced with and it has the advantage of being a permanent fix for small stuff around the boat. The greenish hue stuff I have is sandable and paintable although is I ever did get a hull puncture I’d go back to it once out of the water to properly clean, dress and laminate in a glassed repair.)
I’ve had poor performance over time with any silicone products in nearly every marine application ….
Might I suggest getting a tube of 3M 5200 and 5400 White sealant compound as these are marine grade and do an excellent job for nearly forever.
As part of your onboard Emergency or Maintenance kit might I also suggest a sheet or strip of 80 grit Wet-use Emory cloth, a bottle of 70-to-90% alcohol and several clean HD cloth shop towels along with several pairs of HD Nitrile disposable gloves. If you have the inclination you might also add one of those mid-size ‘Home Tool Kit’ suitcases and a Digital Multimetter. Just a suggestion…. Personally I’ve found it handy to have this onboard to address the little stuff that comes up instead of having to bring it to the boat.
Another suggestion would be to make up a simple line drawing schematic of your electrical system and keep a copy onboard in a large zip-lock bag se you can have it as a ready reference you can handle without getting it wet. The Zip-lock also allows you to access it to make revisions down the way. Paper is nice that way…no batteries or devices required.
As far as your battery terminal fuses…For your Start Battery: Look up your engine specs for what amperage you engine should draw for starting then multiply that by 1.25 to give yourself some margin for inrush and peak draw current. Then check the amperage capacity of your starter wire gauge. The lower amperage capability is the one I’d suggest fusing sizing to. That way you can protect your engine components in case there is a problem. I’d also carry spares as well as a couple at 2x as a last resort to maybe avoid getting stranded. (A Tow Boat subscription is also a good thing to have!)
For your House Battery: That’s a bit more complicated as you need to look at ALL the wiring gauge sizes you have that are not individually fused and size the fuse to the smallest gauge size. House Battery fuses are there to protect the wiring from a dead short so they don’t over heat / melt thier insulation / and potentially cause damage or fire. I’d take the opportunity to find any individual use circuits that don’t already have at least in-line fuses and add them now. You have the choice with each individual use house circuit to size that circuit to protect both the wire and the end use device… but the fuse needs to be sized to protect the lower of the two.
> For example:
>> I have a GPS unit that should never draw more than 1 amp but the wires feeding it are capable of 10 amps. So I have the fuse set to 1 amp to protect the device from an user load.
>> Similarly I have a circuit that has a potential variable load of 0-to-10 amps but the wire size gauge is only rated for 5 amps so the fuse selected for that circuit is 5 amps. That way the wire is protected from an overload.
(Honesty Note: In actuality I should say that I’ve converted out all my wiring to marine grade wires and replaced all in-line fuses to panel mounted resettable circuit breakers with labels.)
Hope this might be helpful….
Best Regards,
Over Easy
