As with many older boats, haphazard additions and jury rigs had taken their toll on Sonrisa’s wiring and it looked like a ball of colorful spaghetti.  In addition the electrical panels were installed in a bulkhead so that they backed into the starboard lazarette.  This was the factory design, but it rendered the lazarette almost useless.  Items had to be placed in there with the greatest of care for fear of snagging the wiring, and they had to be dry, and they couldn’t shift around. All pretty much impossible on a boat.

This is what you used to see when you opened the starboard lazarette.

And this was the view from inside the boat

The solution to regaining the use of our lazarette was to build a shallow cabinet just inside the bulkhead where the panels were originally installed and to move the batteries to a new location.   We put in brand new panels and pulled new wire for the AC system throughout the boat.  In addition we changed the battery charging from the old 1, 2, both system, which required remembering to switch batteries constantly, to a dedicated house and cranking battery.  All charging goes to the house battery and a Xantrex Echo Charger diverts a small portion to keep the cranking battery topped up.  This way we never drain our cranking battery and we don’t have to worry about switching batteries.

This is the new cabinet

This is the DC side opened

And with the AC side open as well