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hello everyone jeff cote here with

boatingtechtalk.com

all right we have another question from

a fellow boater richard

richard has a corbin 39 center cockpit

pilot house catch a sailboat 39 feet

center cockpit all right so this is a

1986

boat he says jeff we're preparing our

boat for a live aboard cruising

and what are your top tips for rewiring

a mast ours is removed and i'm preparing

to replace all the wires oh richard what

great question because i just did the

exact same thing

on my sailboats mast so this is a i saw

the question coming into my inbox i was

like

why not talk about this so when your

mast is off your boat and some of us

obviously take down their mass more

regular than others but here in the

pacific northwest

because most of the boats stay in the

water all throughout the year

it's pretty uncommon for us to take our

mast

or d-mast of a sailboat so because it's

pretty uncommon to do that that means

that it rarely gets done

and so given the opportunity especially

if you're not planning on doing it again

or your frequency is every 5 10 15 or 20

or 30 years

besides obviously in my case you know

looking at all

the standing rigging all the fittings

and all the things that a rigger would

have to do

on the mat so in my instance you know

they looked at

obviously repainting you know redoing

all the metal fittings you know

making the right penetrations in the

mass all that stuff but then again

that's more sort of a rigor right

so um that you'll want to have do that

or you'll do it yourself but regardless

that's a skill on itself

here today i'm talking about the

electrical or the communications part

of what you do when your mass is down so

the first thing in my case especially if

your mass hasn't been touched in 20 30

years and my boat is in 1990 so nobody

had done this in since 1990 so we're

talking over about 30 years

i basically took every single piece of

wiring out of that mast

why because when the mass is down a

running wire in a mass is a joke

and wires compared to the cost of doing

when the mass is

upright is again a joke so took the

opportunity to literally clear out all

the coaxial cable to the vhf replace vhf

antenna

30 year old replaced anchor light

replaced steaming light replaced

spreader lights replaced all of it

why because now's the time everybody's

working at literally the best

sort of level which is at hip height you

put the mat

on us on a horse right i'm not sure what

the

name is in english sorry for my lack of

translation here folks

but you've got the mass on the ground

you're working at hip

level this is perfect this is a great

occasion to run

all new wires this is also in my mass

was an opportunity

to run a second conduit right so now we

had a one conduit that went all the way

to the top of the mass

then we had another conduit that was

running sort of from the bottom of the

mass to where the radar was going to be

installed because yes i decided to

install my radar on the mast

and so literally had the opportunity of

running a new conduit for the mast

inside so i have two conduits which was

again a new opportunity i don't think

you could ever do that with the mass

being upright and then having sure that

all the connections are done properly

now's your opportunity right why not and

then for me

and again this is some people are going

to say oh it's stupid no it's overkill

oh you don't need to do that and i'm not

disagreeing with you

i'm telling you about what i would have

done on my math which i just did

literally a month ago

right and it's not to say that i'm right

and someone else is wrong we don't need

to

make things polarized there's no right

or wrong here jeff cote's opinion

is take the opportunity when the mass is

down especially if it hasn't happened in

years or

decades or ever and if your mass is 20

years old or 30 years old and the

wiring in that boat or in that mass is

that old

when the mass is down take it all out

and remove everything on that mass even

if it's working

because you don't have to wait for

something to fail to change it

right and i do the same thing with my

engine i don't change my hoses when they

break i change my hoses based on a

certain

recommendation that i've heard from

mechanics and i do a lot of

preventative maintenance and this would

be preventative maintenance

and what's more important think about

this than having a good vhf connection

so that you can reach the outside world

when you need to that's pretty up top of

my list

a really good anchor light that works

because sometimes you're in an anchorage

that actually has

traffic at night and then you want

visibility what about a steaming light

that allows that alerts other boats when

you're underway knowing that you're

actually

under power what's more important than

actually a deck light at night so that

when you actually are fixing your anchor

or something and it's terrible that you

want to see what you're doing

or a spreader light maybe you're

installing a radar that's one of the

reasons i did it now you're installing a

radar you're making sure the bracket

all those reasons are good reasons to

not have to worry

and when we're out boating my philosophy

has always been

take care of what you can sooner rather

than later

because i can guarantee you that once

we're on the water things start failing

and the things that you didn't replace

are probably the things they're going to

start failing so you got to get yourself

ahead of the curve so

great question richard i love it and i

hope i don't upset too many people by

telling people to do a lot of

preventative maintenance with their mass

work

but i truly believe that it's worth

every penny

because being on the water is about

having a trouble free experience as much

as possible

mine aren't trouble free but i do reduce

the risk and the best way to do that is

preventative maintenance

so thanks for asking and thanks for

watching

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