Managing excess cables/wires/etc

[AlexB]

Hey, everyone.

I'm looking for tips on how to manage all my excess cables in the cabin of my SC19. I've got a mess of transducer cable, radar cable, trim tab cable, VHF antenna cable, etc, etc, that I need to tidy up. Soon there will be even more cables since I'm installing a Garmin heading sensor that operates on a NMEA network.

Can anyone share tips or photos showing how you manage all the excess cables in your cuddy?

Has anyone built an "enclosure" on the vertical surface behind the helm to hide all your front-end wiring, fuse block, etc?

I'm trying to make the cuddy a little more hospitable for my 6YO daughter and her friends, and just tidy it up in general.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Cheers,

~Alex   

[davidsea]

   Managing the helm mess is always an issue, especially when you keep adding more stuff.    My '96 SR19 had a box behind it with a lift-off panel to cover the back. (the later models had a snap-on vinyl cover)    I modified the lift-off with a piano hinge across the bottom and a flush paddle latch at the top.   The outside has 3 covered (child-proof?) fuseblocks.   The left 2 are fed directly through a 50A breaker at the battery switch.   The right one is fed from the same 4GA cable, but through a relay so it's only 'on' with the ignition.   The black rectangular panel on the lower right has a 12V socket, dual USB ports, a digital voltmeter, and a lighted on-off switch, so I'm aware when it's on and what the house battery voltage is  (I frequently sleep on the boat). 
   I managed the mess by shortening any wire or cable I possibly could to the minimum length needed.   ALL of the cheap plastic inline fuseholders are gone, and each device gets power from its own ATC fuse in one of the blocks.  (I've still got 3 unused fuse positions just waiting for whatever I buy next....      VHF antenna, GPS antenna, and some NMEA cables can be re-terminated, as can just about anything on 12VDC.    Obviously, most transducer cables, radar cables and things with AC signals and fragile data cannot.   With the variety of lengths, connectors and junctions in NMEA 2K, it's usually not worth the effort to shorten anything.   The connectors are available but aren't very user-friendly.    Anything you can't shorten should be loosely coiled up AWAY from the helm area if at all possible, making sure than anything high-current is away from the bottom of the compass.    I wanted very clean VHF performance, so my antenna cable goes directly up and out of the helm and across the cabin - my antenna is mounted on the portside cabin wall just below the windows - out of the way and no interference.
   The best thing I included was a short LED lightstrip above the fold-down panel - no more trying to work with a flashlight in a very crowded space!

   

[AlexB]

Thanks, David! This is very helpful. My setup is much simpler (so far...), but I still think I could benefit from some sort of enclosure like you have here.

[disposable]

inspired by David, I made a similar box with a fold-down cover, but mine had everything inside and went under the helm (cuz it was fairly dry and secure in the house). I'll attach a pic, but if you wanna see more details you can look in this build thread:

https://www.arimaowners.com/index.php?topic=20877.75

[Barnaclebob]

I bundle them up individually and have a big pile in the wiring box under the helm.  Its somewhat organized chaos tbh.  You could also bundle them in the compartment where the throttle lever is mounted.

[AJFishin]

Imo the best way to go about it is how Disposable did his considering you have a Sea Chaser. You'll have more room and a little more ease building a box on the outside under the helm instead of building one in the cuddy.
The Sea Ranger already has a box in the cuddy, but the cuddy is significantly larger and if you have kids in the cuddy of the Chaser, it's going to get kicked and kicked a few more times.
The Sea Chaser doesn't have much room in the cuddy to spare for everything you have and you'll end up taking a lot room out of the cuddy.

Check out Disposable's thread to give you some ideas, it's worth looking over.

https://www.arimaowners.com/index.php?topic=20877.50

[Danno]

inspired by David, I made a similar box with a fold-down cover, but mine had everything inside and went under the helm (cuz it was fairly dry and secure in the house). I'll attach a pic, but if you wanna see more details you can look in this build thread:

https://www.arimaowners.com/index.php?topic=20877.75

     

Why didn't I do that? I'm 6'5" and 67 yrs old. Just getting into the cuddy of a Sea Chaser is a major effort only out done by trying to get out!

[Mustard tiger]

You can see my nmea backbone screwed down on the bottom of the box. My has the snap cover over it. I'm lucking the radar and vhf left over wiring is in the hard top cavity. The wiring for the gauges is mounted on the back side of the box, you cant see but you can see wires coming down top left.