It sure does help having an electrician on board. Last Sunday Matt opened up our electrical panel and was horrified at what he saw. Talk about a fire hazard! He spent all day rewiring the panel, taking care to label every wire and replace any damaged ring terminals. He also rebalanced the load so that we weren’t drawing too much from one panel.
It went from looking like that jumbled mess above to this:
We mapped out all of the outlets on the boat so we knew which ones ran off the inverter and which ones were 120V. Matt also took the time to inspect and label each wire, replacing any connectors that were singed or loose.
Let’s just say, we’ve both been sleeping a better knowing that our boat won’t catch fire. Speaking of which, there were two boats at a marina right across the creek from ours that caught on fire last weekend. Apparently the family living aboard one of the boats plugged in several space heaters into one power strip. Caught their boat and a neighboring boat on fire. Luckily there were no fatalities, but a good lesson learned to always be careful to not overload your circuits!
