Bow Light and wiring and coconuts

      This post may have more information than you want, but here we are on a project:

Replacing broken old lights with brighter, smaller, new LED:

oldnew

 

housing for new light.

   We are on day 4 of connecting or figuring out how to connect the new bi-color green and red bow light. 

 small grey wire peeking out that we attached new white wire to.

This is the bow with so much I won't define it all.  You can see the size of the stainless steel tubing of the bow pulpit that the wire needs to slide through to go down to the anchor locker.

Anchor locker with wire coming from above and temporarily attached to wires that go to the electrical panel at the Nav station.                  right here

                                                                                  anchor chain stored here.


 spliced wires that were taped up and are not fitting through stainless steel tubes.

 The old light was removed while keeping the wire in place that follows 2 right angle turns through the bow pulpit stainless steel tubing down to the anchor locker where it connects to the electricity.  The red wire is positive and yellow is ground (battery minus) on wires from the switch panel. They go up to the anchor locker.   In the anchor locker the wires switch to black and white colors.  Black should have connected to the yellow wire and the white to the red wire, but it was backwards so when Drew tested it, it didn't light up.  Some lights are protected against reverse polarity but LED  must have the polarity correct.
  For LED lights in 12 volt DC systems on a boat red is positive and black is ground or battery minus.  House wiring color codes are different.  On this boat we have 5 separate grounding systems:
1.  Battery minus that's anything connected to 12 volts. 
2.  For AC 110 volts there is AC neutral white (in a house the white wire.)
3. AC safety ground, the green wire (in a house it's a bare wire)  No current flows through it. 
4. The bonding ground connects all the large metal objects on the boat, like the fuel tank, mast, pulpits, arch and all wires connect to the engine that connects to the water to provide safety during electrical storms.
5. The RF ground for the single side band radio are dynaplates underwater against the hull on either side of the keel and connected to the single side band antenna tuner.

All the grounds are connected together at one point on the engine block in the boat to avoid ground loops.  The engine block is connected to battery minus.
There's a grounding bus bar behind the switch panel.  Almost all of the ground wires are yellow or brown and newer ones use black.  At that same bus bar there is also a single connection to the AC neutral wires.  (All dictated by Drew.)
 
     This old light drew 2 amps and the new LED light draws 1/6 amp.  The old lamp was broken on the side of a canal as we motored in; side to the wall, but the bow light hit the wall first.  oops.   Saving amps is important to do when we are not plugged into a dock because the only thing that keeps lights, heat, radio, frig, phones and computers charged/ going are the six 12 volt batteries.  These batteries when on a mooring are kept "topped off" or charged by our wind generator, 2 solar panels and the engine running a few hours every day.

   All these days we are trying to squeeze the new bow light wire that is attached to the old wiring and pull it through, down to the anchor locker.  This is not happening.  It keeps getting stuck.  Drew is in the anchor locker pulling the wire under the pulpit and I am at the pulpit feeding in the new wire that is taped to the old.  The two right angles it must go through are prohibiting it from moving - not sure how we'll solve this one.  My ideas are going unheeded - to lubricate the wire a lot to slide it through the tubes.  Or to use a very small, strong wire and pull it through with that as the leader rather than use the existing old grey wiring to pull through the new white wire.  The grey wire can barely slide through.
It's complicated.

This is keeping us from going out at all.  We have moved out of the slip to get our pump outs, but today the pump outs at the marina are being repaired.  So no pump out.
We couldn't go to the symphony Wallcast in Miami Beach last night because it rained.  I did take Mazu for a run yesterday and visited the little fair at the US Dept of Agriculture grounds on beautiful Old Cutler Road.

I continue to harbor a persistent deep rattling chest cough and anvil-on-the-chest tiredness.  I can only last about 2 days on the boat before my antsy spirit lifts me out of the boring bed to do anything at all. 

Of course there is always the evening sunset.

COCONUTS

  The marina cuts down all the coconuts so they don't fall on people and cars and gives them away out of a pick-up truck.  Drew sawed open a coconut.  The coconut water is in his hand, saw and sliced away green coconut.  The inside is sort of like a custard that he eats with a spoon.  Loves it!



me writing the blog

 Just read Iris Murdock's The Unicorn.  amazing writer.