October 21, 2010
So, October 15th, 2010 we owned our boat one full year and discovered we have only put 98 hrs on the engine. Yep, not many travels to foreign locations. But, we did do lots of small runs. The boat is in good shape now mechanically for distance traveling.
I have been looking at the wiring panels as of late and they are wired very non-conventionally to say the least. The 12V panel is pretty straight forward. But the negative buss is awfully corroded and I have ordered an new 20 screw buss from Defender. At least with the DC wiring they stuck with black wire color being negative/ground. I wrote extensively about the inadequate ground wire sizes and how the DC breakers are connected one to the next with #10 wire.
But what has really been crazy is when I decided to add a 120 VAC socket on the fly bridge. I wired it standard Black hot, white neutral and green ground. But, When I went to the AC panel and was going to add this to the breaker labeled "receptacles" I was befuddled. All the wires at the breakers were red in color except for the hot water heater. That breaker had a white wire coming out of it!. So OK in 1979 they decided to use red for hot 120VAC . So guess what black is? It's neutral!! I figured I was seeing things and then decided to check the sockets with a polarity checker. MOST, but not all indicated the hot and neutral were reversed. Yes. The guy wiring the sockets figured black was hot. So, I corrected all the sockets wiring the black neutral to where the normal white would go and red to the hot side. There is little documentation from my Albin documents. I do have a wiring diagram that shows the breakers but does not mention the color wire at the breakers except 1 breaker. The hot water heater indicates that that breaker has a white wire going to the hot side of the hot water heater. This is disturbing. At least the green is ground and if whatever color wire is hot wears through to some metal case the green will offer a path a trip the breaker. I cannot follow the logic of those wiring technicians from 1979 in Taiwan.

The later installed 2nd shore power cord was wired properly when the air conditioning was installed.

I would really like to change all the wire to marine standards. But, for now the sockets are safe.