Let There Be Light

One of the small jobs I’ve been putting off has been to get the nav lights working on Defiant. Without nav lights I can’t go anywhere after dark, so it’s kind of important to get done soon. In theory there are a very limited number of parts that could need repair, basically two wires, a lightbulb, and a breaker.

Starting with the bow, where the lamp should have been only a large dent remained. This was not actually a terrible thing, as swapping in a whole new lamp is a pretty cheap and straightforward fix. So I toned the remaining wires and bad news, nothing toned. In the anchor locker I found where those wires should have terminated, and sadly they did not. And so, for this simple job the bow pulpit now had to come off.

With the pulpit off I was able to fish what was left of the wires and tape it to a new paracord messenger line, but as I snaked the old wire and new messenger I could feel it snagging on the jagged weld edges inside the pulpit. I was surprised because this is the only chaseway, so it has to be the original one used by Bayfield back in 1988; the build quality on Defiant is typically much better than that. The messenger line made it half way through the roughly seven feet of pulpit handrail before the wire let go, leaving me pretty well shit out of luck snaking fresh wires up the three foot vertical, through the sharp edges of the weld joints, down the length of the bowsprit and then down another pair of ninety degree turns to the bow. I tried fishing a drain auger, no luck. I tried a fiberglass fish with tape on the end, same result.

Then I tried asking people smarter than I for ideas, because I was out of them. Ford suggested we try vacuuming a messenger line through, and I dismissed the idea because that was too long a run for a vacuum to work. We tried a few more ideas, then Tony suggested we use the vacuum with a little wet gauze tied to the end, and as I was totally out of ideas, we went for it.

Holy shit did that work. The kite line tracer we sent shot down the railing until the gauze got caught on that snaggy metal bit inside - but the vacuum pulled the line past it until a loop of kite line appeared all the way at the end.

Now we just needed to pull the new 14/2 through and we’d be set to go. Wire was tied to the kite line, kite line was pulled slowly while wire was fed… and the kite line frayed and snapped halfway through the rail, again.

Discouraged, we pulled the line out and tried again with paracord, but it was too heavy to make the trip. So we set up new kite line with another gauze ball up front, and again it flew - and again got stuck inside. Now the vacuum in the rail was clogged enough with gauze and old kite line that nothing was moving. We started to try and figure out how to clear the rail - maybe fill it with butane and light it, let the rail act like a tiny cannon and clear itself out?

But the bigger issue was, something inside this rail tube had eaten the wires before and was eating everything we ran through it now. This was not the best run. The middle rail, on the other hand, was virgin territory. If I drilled a single hole at the front of the middle rail, then another at the corner where the middle and far aft stanchion met, I could run the new wire safely through holes I would make sure were deburred and snag free - no more eating wires and lines.

I drilled and ground smooth the holes, taped the vacuum to one end, and once again the wet gauze bullet shot down the rail and fed our kite line tracer in seconds. I tied it off to the paracord, and once again that got stuck and had to be fished back out halfway. Then I remembered I had a spool of whipping twine - really thin, light, tough stuff used for finishing off rope ends. I fed this down the rail with the vacuum, made a thin bridle for the 14/2, and by running back and forth from either end and feeding it an inch or so at a time I was able to get it moving down the rail.

By this time the sun was setting and I was alone, but I had figured out the angle I needed on both ends to feed the line through smoothly - and that’s where the snatch block saved the day once again.

The slow, steady feed finally produced enough wire at both ends to feed down into the anchor locker and splice back onto the severed bow light contacts. The multi confirmed, 12v at the bow.

I didn’t even bother cleaning up the deck or the cockpit that night - thankfully there was no rain. The next day was essentially a repeat performance, this time starting at the stern of the boat (which also had a disconnected pair of rotted-out wires).

What I had mentally chalked up to a quick change out of some lightbulbs became a very long 48 hours - that seems to be how boat projects go. But there is something exceptionally satisfying about wire snaking jobs; hidden infrastructure like wires and plumbing is the polish that moves this project from a refit to a restoration.