Electricity on board a yacht is always a delicate topic as in our case weight, waterproof / splash-proof equipment is not always standard of the shelf available. The salty air can become over time an issue for certain sensible equipment [corrosion issues]. To save weight and cable length it is preferable to have the controllers, breakers etc. mounted close by. As unfortunately often standard solutions don't fit our requirements, we just made them ourselves, lots of DYI...
We want to show you one of our electrical box customizations with the example of the winch breaker box. It will be mounted in the wetlocker at the mast base - close to the winches and in an area that is very humid and sometimes wet.
And for those who are now surprised - yes, we work on board a performance yacht that has powerful electric winches - and they are great ;-)
The box itself that we have used for our customization is off the shelve from the local electrical supply shop. It's easily available. We have mounted it with a backing plate out of Forex / Starboard / Expended PVC, so we could screw the box to the board.
We installed the cable glands of the correct size and the backing plate for the positive studs were cnc cut out of G10 - compressed fiberglass. The full "3 dimensions" of the box have been used to install all the necessary parts and have smooth cable runs.
Once the breakers were mounted and the connections done in the box, we noticed that the actual breakers would be too exposed on the surface of the box. We are storing our fenders and other equipment in the wet locker and the risk of this equipment interfering with the winch breakers would be too big. Note that the breakers have been fitted in the cnc cut recess in the box cover for perfect fit and to be sealed.
To solve this issue we went to get a second box, one size bigger than the original one.
The functions of the breakers are perfectly accessible for us to interact if needed but the breakers are better protected from any moving equipment in the wet locker which is one of our storage spaces on board. The PVC boxes are light weight and with an additional seal on the cover we have improved the waterproofness. The breakers themselves are waterproof anyhow.
Now the box is installed and we are happy with our dust it yourself project.
Over the years, we have done lot's of bracketing and mounting plates out of different materials - more blog entries to come that will cover the topic...
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