This handsome and well organized electrical panel is fitted to a Cherubini 44 everything is neatly labeled and laid out in a logical fashion. Sadly many boats are not quite as good as this. The wiring on many older boats may be fine and up to ABYC standards but over the years extra supplementary switches get added as new equipment is installed and before you know it everything becomes a mess, nothing matches and there is no logic to the electrical layout aboard.
I see this type of thing a lot when surveying boats. Back in the day on even large boats there was little use for large electrical panels, GPS, radar and other electronic aids to navigation did not exist or were outside of the realm of the yachtsman. If I remember correctly on the 72 foot yacht that I used to skipper there were no more than 10 switches. We had no AC power aboard, the cabin was mostly lit with oil lamps, the bilge pumps were all manually operated as were the toilets so our electrical requirements were pretty small.
Now I bet if I went aboard the boat today it would have all the modern conveniences and then some all requiring a large electrical panel.
It is with this in mind that I have been thinking about upgrading 'Mallard's' electrical panel. The quandary is that while off the shelf units like those from Blue sea systems are excellent units they don't always address the exact requirements of the boat owner and so it is with me so much so that I have been thinking of designing a custom panel.
One such outfit that makes these one off panels is Mobile Marine from Newburyport in MA. They were showing at the Maine Boat builders show this year as they have in the past and I really like what they can do. Their panels look neat and well thought out and they are able to make almost any configuration it would seem. One other firm which is worth checking out is Front Panel Express which has free down loadable software that lets you design your own panel. Sadly this is only available for Windows at present and as I use a Mac I shall have to wait until I can get hold of a PC to give it a try. I have seen panels that other boat owners have designed for themselves with this system and the results are impressive.
Designing the panel is all very well but I know what is going to happen, just as I get it finished and installed I'll need to upgrade again to incorporate the latest gizmo!
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