The top ten things that make my life difficult.

These are the things that grate on me. Although the numbers are very difficult to get at, I would estimate that annual North American sales of marine electronics related gear is about $800,000,000 per year. My guess is about 15 percent of the sales costs are required to install all of this gear. This works out to about $120,000,000 a year. Of this number easily half is spent working around poor boat design. That's $60,000,000 in annual costs to owners that good boat design would have saved.

Lets look at a small typical new boat package. Chart plotter ($2500), radar ($1000), VHF ($150), sounder module ($500), transducer ($200), VHF antenna ($80). This totals $4230. Using the 15% rule, installation costs would be about $635, this would be about one man day plus or minus to install the system. The wasted cost to the buyer is $317.00, This is a small system, and not an extreme case, of which there are many. So right out of its shrink wrap the new boat is already costing owners lots of real money. 

The incapability of most boat builders, both large and small in understanding even the basics of how their customers will use their boats, and what they might want to install on them astounds me daily. Why are the water pick ups on both sides of the hull insuring I can't install a properly working transom mount transducer? Did you think this might be important, or you just don't know any better? It was purported by marketing to be a offshore fishing boat, but there is no mounting plate to install a radar, and no way to get the cable down to the chart plotter. The three hours it took to pull the transducer wire to the console because the 2" piece of PVC pipe pretending to be a grown up conduit is already packed to the max. The boat with no place to install an autopilot compass. A console interior with no mounting blocks to install gear. No fuse blocks, power leads, documentation, wire pulls, and many others round out the list.

# 1 The wire pull.

The no wire pull zone

You are traveling through another bad dimension, a dimension of not only frustration and ire, but of mind. A journey into a horrific land whose boundaries are that of poor workmanship. That's a signpost ahead, your next stop, the "No Wire Pull Zone".

It's a hot day, and the air is as still as death. The wire fish slides effortlessly through the small hole and heads up the pipe, and then stops with a clink. The installer wipes the sweat from his brow, backs the fish off a bit, and tries again. Clink, and again clink. A flash of fear crosses the installers face as he nervously tries again and again to push the wire fish into the abyss. Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink. The installers sense of foreboding, builds to a peak and he screams in terror, for he now knows he has entered the "No Wire Pull Zone".

Boating yin and yang

We're starting in the happy place today. June Cleaver is baking a fresh apple pie, the Beaver is doing his homework, little Opie Taylor is fishing down at the pond, and the sun is shinning. I have to re-install a VHF antenna, and an older Raystar 120 GPS antenna. Brand new T-top canvas has just been installed, and I had to untie a portion of it to see where the old equipment holes were located. Lo and behold, look at that hole, it's a beauty. Two inches in diameter, and someone took a moment to deburr the edges. How sweet it is, this is the way it's supposed to be done, and my hats off to the builder of this T-top.

That boat ain't right, a primer.

I'm currently doing a typical job installing electronics on a new boat. It's a 26' T-top center console boat, and it embodies all of the things I wish the owner had looked for before buying it. This boat is mid range priced, and is really no better, or worse than most of them. I'm not going to show you a picture of it, but I have gathered some examples from other boats to demonstrate some of the issues I perennially complain about in boats of this size and style.


I have never actually timed it, but I think that pulling wires from A to B is at least half of the cost of installing electronics, and in many cases, even more so. So it begs the question, why do boat builders make this task so difficult? The other issue involved is why builders seem to have such a difficult time anticipating what kind of equipment their buyers might install, and provide some accommodation for it. This really shouldn't be too hard to do, or are there cosmic forces at work here I just can't fathom? So today I'm talking to the buyers of these boats, and the intent is to help you avoid the worst of these problems in advance, or at least know what the warts will be when you buy your new toy.

So let's start with the T-top, and what to look for. Ninety degree pulls should be avoided if possible, and where you find one, you will typically find two. These turns are difficult to make with wiring. So stand back, and imagine you, yes you, will have to pull a 1/2" radar cable from the electronics box up top, and into the console. You can then also think about how you are going to install the missing pull wire in the first place. Long hemostats, shop vac, magnets, a skyhook?

Magnifico Yachts sealant application memo

17 Feb 11
Magnifico Yachts inter-company memo
From: J. P. Grunion  - President
To: All employees
Subject: Poor sealant application

It has been pointed out to me by marketing staff, that employees are not doing an adequate job of sealing conduit pull locations, and we must improve this vital function. Because of this, we have retained the renown installer Steve Stickus who is a past winner of the prestigious S.M.I.T.E awards to provide special training classes for all employees on adhesive sealant application techniques.

To achieve this end we have also purchased new, state of the art high pressure sealing systems with 1000 psi compressors, and high flow volume application guns to insure that all employees have the right equipment to perform this critical task.

Our goal is to provide the worlds finest yachts, and if each end of conduit wire pulls need to be very well sealed, then we should do our very best to insure this happens. We certainly wouldn't want anything to get into these pulls after we ship the yacht. 

Corporate training staff will send each department a schedule for the employee sealant training next week. These will be four hour courses, and a certificate for completion will be awarded to each employee. The Sales and Marketing departments are excused from taking this training due to the corporate planning meeting scheduled in Las Vegas next week.

 Thank you for your cooperation in this important endeavor. J.P. Grunion, President - Magnifico Yachts  

It just beats the crap out of me why they would do this. This was part of the pull from the hardtop to the console. The one place where water could get in was not sealed at all. The place that water could not get in at all was sealed to the max. It took about a half an hour of hacking and slashing to get this rubbery goo out of the pull ends. The cables I had to pull were radar power, radar data, N2K, VHF antenna, and XM audio, and you know they would have all fit through that small 1/2" piece of split loom, right?