GFI in Catalina 25

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kmdeleon

.
Sep 18, 2011
8
Catalina 25 Washington NC
Hi All,
Hubby and I went to spend some quality time on the boat this weekend only to find that we had no electricity on the boat. Our boat was damaged in Hurricane Irene and we hadn't tried shore power since we got it back. We're newbies so we don't know exactly where everything is yet, but according to our manual (old and faded) we should have GFI protection on our two 110 outlets - we don't. The recepticals look like they are original though. We've noticed that several things in the manual don't seem to apply to our boat though so we were wondering if the GFI is located somewhere else. We pulled the back off of the AC switch and didn't find anything GFI looking there either. Does anyone have any clue as to where the GFI might be? The boats an 86' so I can't imagine that it doesn't have one.

Help!

Thanks,
Karen
 
Stu Jackson

Stu Jackson

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Feb 26, 2004
23,047
Catalina 34 224 Maple Bay, BC, Canada
At that "age" they didn't have them. What most of us with boat of that vintage have done is to install GFCI outlets, depending on how the A.C. wiring is run. Only the first outlet of a string needs to have one, it will "cover" the remaining outlets downtream.

What you need to do is to 1) find out where the A.C. comes into your panel (just for knowing that) and 2) trace the wiring coming OUT of the A.C. portion of yoru panel to the first outlet and install the GFCI outlet (receptacle) there and 3) find out if you have more than one "loop" of A.C. wiring to your other outlets. In many cases Catalina ran the A.C. all the way around the boat from outlet to the next, sometimes they had two branches.

By the time you're done, you'll have learned more about your boat and will not be newbies anymore.

Good luck.
 
Stu Jackson

Stu Jackson

.
Feb 26, 2004
23,047
Catalina 34 224 Maple Bay, BC, Canada
GFCIs were available in 1986. It's just that they weren't installed on our boats. Mine is a 1986 and I know of many other newer Catalinas that don't have 'em, either.
 
K

kmdeleon

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Sep 18, 2011
8
Catalina 25 Washington NC
Thanks Stu - that makes sense. I believe our A.C. has two branches going to two different outlets, so we'll need 2 GFI's. Right now my A.C. switch is not working so I've got to figure that out/replace it, but I'm really uncomfortable not having GFI protection on the boat. It just seems like such a bad idea to me. I wonder why the Catalina folks didn't install them.
 
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