Blow by Blow
Yes my boat is a 37C. First I drilled the four holes—two at the bottom of the mast (one was 5/8-inch and the other was one-inch), then one 5/8-inch hole just below the spreaders, and a one-inch hole at the top of the mast (the holes that were there were not big enough for grommets). I’ve re-wired my whole boat with Anchor Marine safety wire. It’s a two wire ‘romex-like’ insulated wire with one red and one yellow wire. It’s supposed to keep you from getting the black wire confused with the AC black wire. So I used 14/2 marine safety wire with an additional 14 awg red wire taped to the 14/2. I measured first then laid it out on the dock and taped it together with electrical tape every two feet or so. I ended up with two bundles of wire. One long enough to go from my DC panel to the top of the mast (with three wires, one yellow ground and two red hot wires). Then I had another 3 wire bundle long enough to go from the panel to the spreader level. So I ended up having one ground and two hot wires at mast top and the same at spreader level. When I had these two bundles on the dock I added a piece of coax to the mast-top bundle. It was wasted, too. The size that this bundle ended up being was why I needed the one-inch holes. After that I put 3 wire ties, right next to each other, pointing out in three different directions, about every 3 feet on both bundles, leaving the tails on the wire ties. This was something I read somewhere to keep the wires from slapping the inside of the mast. It basically hold the wired away from the sides of the mast. It took a lot of work to get all that stuffed through my holes, but it has worked beautifully. Even in the nastiest weather when the boat is just bucking, no wires slapping the inside of the mast keeping me awake (I live on my boat). O.K., now to get all this stuff inside the mast. I first went mast top and put an electricians fish tape in the top hole, from the top down, and used a little hanger wire hook to reach in the bottom hole and grab the end of the fish tape and pull it out the hole. I then fastened two pieces of 1/4-inch nylon line to the end of the fish tape and drug them up the mast. Then I did the same thing at spreader level. This put one pull rope at each level to use now and one left at each level for later possible use. I could probably even use them to pull up a halyard if needed. One at a time I wound the wire bundles back on to a wire spool and found a piece of pipe that would fit through the hole in the spool. The pipe was long enough to put across the top of lifelines on the foredeck so that the spools would spin. I went up the mast with a wire bundle tied to my belt and my girlfriend helping to feed wire off the spools, then hooked the wire bundles to the pull rope at the top. I fed the wires through the hole on top while my girlfriend went back and forth between the deck (feeding me wire) and the bottom of the mast (pulling on the pull rope). We did this first at mast top then at spreader level. There was a little bit of yelling, but not much I swear. I made a rain drip loop where the wire comes out of the mast. I slipped a piece of nylon reinforced plastic water hose over the wire bundles for chafe protection and used a big hose clamp that goes all the way around the mast for tension relief, to secure the wire to the mast. I now have enough wire for the new LED tri-color/anchor light I put at mast top plus the steaming light and spreader/deck lights at spreader level. I went sailing for a month and a half in some mean Hawaiian winter weather in the channels between the islands last winter and everything held just fine. Hope this helps.
