My O’Day 22 Sailboat Blog

For $24.99 I ordered this anchor light. Low amp draw for my small boat. Updated total: $5236.91

For $29.85 I ordered this antenna for my VHF radio that I have not purchased yet. I already have the Uniden Mystic GPS/VHF Handheld which is one of the best things I’ve ever gotten for boating, but this will allow me to communicate long range or use the handheld on the dinghy while we are on a trip.

Total onging tally update: $5211.92

Bought a ‘used’ battery switch for the ‘new’ electrical system. Total so far: $5182.07

I went to the boat today to do some work. One of the things I did was to see what was left of the electrical system. The last owner did not have a battery in the boat so he pretty much told me that it had no electrical system to speak of. When I took over ownership, I noticed that there are a few parts that maybe salvageable to build my new electrical system. So today I went and stripped everything that was still on there including all of the wiring so I can start fresh.this is a picture of what I was able to salvage.

1. Breaker Panel
2. Distribution Panel
3. 12-volt Cabin light
4. Toggle Switch
5. 2-way pull switch
6. Misc. wiring

Looks like I will be reusing the breaker panel and the distribution panel. Everything else is either too old, broken or inexpensive to buy new.

This is how the old parts look on the boat before I stripped them out:

Here they are removed and organized in my house:

Here is a close up view of the front of the electrical breaker panel:

And here is the back of it:

I had about 30 minutes today to go to the boatyard to finish a couple of small projects on the boat. One is simply pumping the water out of the bilge with my newly acquired manual bilge pump. That was pretty uneventful. The pump worked great. It pumps much faster than I expected without much effort. It will come in handy in the future. The second project is a bit more involved. I wanted to strengthen the chainplates before rigging the boat. Especially the port sidestay. This photo will show you the condition it was in prior to the modification:

It was just bolted the the deck and not on the bulkhead whatsoever. I wonder if this was adequate for the previous owners use or if it had come undone since he last sailed this boat. Even the stock chainplate itself seems kind anemic but I’m sure it is strong enough for the job. I wanted to add some more security to it so I started looking for chainplates. What I ended up using is actually metal bracing from Lowes. I know its not marine grade stainless steel but it will be inside the cabin and would not get a lot of moisture and they are significantly cheaper. I got 4 metal strip bracing for about 2 bucks each and 3 inch bolts, washers and nuts for about 15 bucks to secure them. The original holes on the braces were too small so I drilled them out to 3/8 inch to accommodate the bolts. During installation, I had to drill out the original chainplate holes to attach them to the new chainplate extension. You can see from this photo below that it is significantly stronger than below:

I used some silicon sealant in the drilled out holes just in case there was any moisture that may get in to the bulkhead in the future to cause any rot. It is probably a huge overkill but I figured its better to be safe than sorry. Obviously the same treatment was done to the starboard side just be balance out the rig.

Now whats left are the headstay and backstay chainplates. I’m not sure what to do with them. They seem to be ok as they are but the headstay does not have an over the bow stem fitting as larger boats do. It is just bolted to the deck with backing plates. The backstay is the same way. I’m considering a conversion to a split backstay and use the existing backstay chainplate as the mounting point for the mainsheet. We’ll see how these issues get resolve in the weeks to come…

This is the backing plate of the headstay fittings below deck.

This is the backing plate of the backstay (smaller ones on top)