The Tubes to Nowhere

The weather didn't hold up here as much as it held on, so there wasn't much in the way of epoxy and/or painting. While standing in the boat, my tools and equipment strewn about, I wondered aloud as to why I'm not farther along. I have the planks for the sole sitting in the kitchen, where they've been for a few days. I have unfinished touch up painting. I still don't have the dashboard cutout. And then I looked down and saw a mass of wires and understood. My obsession with the wiring scheme has easily cost me a month, maybe more, in the build. In the end, I'll get what I want, but at what price wires?

Here's what's going on back here:

1. Port/Starboard Locker LEDs (blue)
2. Port/Starboard Lazarette LEDs (blue)
3. Port/Starboard rear cabin lights (white - wires will run aft through the corner of bulkhead 7)
4. Stern light
5. GPS/Chartplotter
6. 4-12 volt 'cigarette lighters,' two on each side installed in the locker wall.
7. Port/Starboard cabin speakers
8. Port/Starboard locker speakers
9. RAM3 VHF microphone
10. Horn button & wiring (controlled from cockpit with horn in dorade box)

The good news is I managed to pull the wires all the way through the conduit using a plumber's snake. Was surprisingly easy once I found the right tool to do that. I'll have a couple dual bus bars back there (one for electronics, the other for lights) and another for the speakers.

The wiring scheme from the transom back.

The conduit threw up on my rug.

Conduit and wires running into the front storage locker.

I've been to the Big Box store easily 6 times in the last few days trying to find the perfect way to ensure that I can run the wires aft-forward without risk of swamping the boat. That's because anything that comes through bulkhead 8 must be watertight, but I keep having to buy things to test and fit. The tubes are a prime example. Since the through-hulls are 1/4", the tubes have to be 1/4" inside diameter. The larger conduit is 7/8" inside diameter, so the outside diameter of such tubes have to be no more than that if I want them to fit snugly. Unfortunately, 3/4" ID / 7/8" OD doesn't exist. I tried shaving down a bit of it and jamming it into the conduit but it doesn't work. That means I'll have to go the other way: get a larger tube to stick the conduit and smaller tube in to ensure it's watertight and secure. That means another $15 and yet another trip to the Big Box store. Oh, well.

Two sets of speaker wires, two sets of pos/neg, and a thin wire for the horn. Yes, a horn. The horn will be in the dorade box.

Frustrated, I gave up trying to finalize the wires (and therefore, permanently installing the sole) until I can get the last little bit of tubing to do this. It took a bit to get up the courage, but I made the leap and installed bulkhead 8 speakers. Now, I posted a question about this on the PocketShip forums and to a man, everyone said it was a bad idea, mostly because of stuff getting in the way of a proper sound, and two, because people aren't sure how to make it watertight. The watertight business is easy. The speakers are low profile, only jutting 1 1/2" inches, which means together with the thickness of bulkhead 8, it's a simple matter of building a small speaker box into the lazarette area.

As luck would have it, the portlight/deadlight was the same size as the speaker. It served as a good template to mark the circle to cut, and then follow with a jigsaw. I wasn't too worried about precision here as long as the cabin view was flush and neat. I'd take care of any issues with the jigsaw with some epoxy, what else.

Speakers installed. I was deciding between two designs. The caterpillar on the right is a LED strip that will run under the cleat. Wires will run aft into the laz and then the hole will be sealed.

From behind. I'll close this off with a watertight box spanning the cleats. The wires will run out a small hole drilled near the top and sealed with silicon.

As for blocking the speakers with dunnage (sailor speak for assorted sailing crap stored in the cabin) I suppose that's possible, even likely. PocketShip #1 has some neat speakers mounted on bulkhead 7 that jut a bit into the cabin. They're of course perfectly placed and aren't blocked by anything. But when I was on PS #1 over the summer and laid down, I came really close to kicking the speakers. That would've been bad, and made me think there must be a better place to put them. Structurally, bulkhead 8 bears weight so removing a bit of it is a risk. With the boxes epoxy'd in back, I think it'll replace most of the structure from the cut out. I'm not sure if I want to continue the massacre of bulkhead 8 and install deck plates. It'd be nice to install them so I have access to the laz without exiting the cabin, but I'm not sure I want to take down bulkhead 8 anymore than I have already.  Ahh... who am I kidding...