Running heavy cable to new windlass General Forum Forums

Wow.. I'm not sure I would have considered running the motor off a wire that long. If I had gone to an electric windlass I think I would Put a dedicated battery up there and a smaller wire that would charge it. Or stay with the bigger wire so It will still work if the forward battery has an issue but under normal circumstances just have that wire charge the battery with a much lower current charge.  I would probably run that long a run for a high voltage wire but that's a lot of current that winch can pull very quickly if something happens to catch the anchor and bind it.  I don't have any hands on experience with installing an electric winch so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I am basing it totally on my electrical experience.

Give the manufacture a call and tell them how long a run it is and ask their opinion on best practices for powering the unit.

Remember that your actual wire run will be about 50% longer than the straight line distance due to all the up and down and around as you run and secure the wire from aft to up forward. I would actually rough measure out all the distance of the actual wire path and add 5 or 10 % for my calculations.

For heavy low voltage loads I tend to run wire 2 to 3 sizes bigger than recommended for the motor and as short as I can make it. My opinion is that the motors last a lot longer and work better with less heat build up in use.

Just my opinion.

Scott

ps. I have found that soldered lugs with heat shrink over the joint of the lug/wire or some dielectric grease in a crimped lug with heat shrink work really well. I then smear di-electric grease on the lug and bolt that the lug goes over at both ends of the cable works really well over time. It is a lot of initial work but I have cables a decade old in a marine environment that just like new inside and out and even on the lugs. The grease does a great job of stopping corrosion cold and maintaining a good electrical connection. I cover all battery terminals and wire ends with it and pretty much have not had to do maintenance at all on those components due to normal corrosion that usually occurs.

We are all doing well. I'm living the life of kids and school. Kids are 4 and 7 and both in school. Zsanic my wife just started school this fall also at the local community college. So I guess my life for the foreseeable future is going to rotate around kids and school 🙂

I have heard different things about soldering. I think it is a mute point if you use the DI-electric grease and heat shrink the joints. I have some soldered and some just crimped. Actually now that I think about it way more are just crimped. I purchased a crimper that is the size of a large bolt cutter for my cable ends. You have to be careful not to destroy the end with it because of how much power it can bring to bear. The only way to undo an end is simply cut it off and put a new one on if you mess it up. I spent a lot of money and time on my battery setup and all bigger cables. so far it has paid off in systems that I can pretty much ignore maintenance wise.

I did a bit of a clean up and refurb on the boat a few months ago to move her from sitting for the last 5 or 6 years and gave the cables a good look at to make sure I didn't have any issues. They looked like I had just put them in a few weeks earlier. Had to replace batteries and when I pulled cables off again it just looked like I had just put them on. Those batteries were at least 8 years old. I was seriously tired of doing wiring and ends and the meticulous attention to detail for every connection I did when I did it but it has paid off massively in the long run. (figure I spent about 4 times as long on every run of cable over just crimping ends on and connecting it) 

I would place the battery one of 3 places. Under v-berth floor just offset from hatch in it.

In storage area under v-berth seat

or in floor of v-berth starboard closet with a a floor built over the top of it that you can just drop in place. I put my Isolation transformer in this location. It is a bit larger than a battery and about 80 lbs. Has worked out well Doesn't really take any usable space away from other stuff.

Also I would definitely go with gel or agm up there. You don't want to deal with standard lead acid there. That area of the boat really gets to bouncing in bad weather much worse than engine compartment. Double heavy duty retaining system for battery also.

Dang... thanks for speaking up. I totally forgot it was the distance both ways, not just one way.

On my boat the main cables for the two battery banks that go to the off/1/2/all switch are as big around as my thumbs. maybe 00 or 000 cable. It was stock best I can tell. When I redid the battery system I connected that cable to a buss bar in the engine compartment and then went with smaller 4 awg cables to the 4 batteries in one bank. However when I say cables I mean that every single battery had it's own 4awg positive and negative cable so that any draw the system put on the batteries pulled 1/4 of the power across any individual battery. so if I had a 100 amp draw it only pulled 25 amps from any single battery or cable. I recently replaced the batteries and put 2 batteries back in. I hooked them up with 2 of the 4 cables per battery so that I still only had 25% of the draw per individual cable. I saved a lot of money getting 4 awg but kept my draw across any individual cable low by having a lot of 4 awg cables. This also allowed me to put 100 amp circuit breakers 12 inches from each battery to protect all that cable and allow me to at a flick of a switch isolate battery's from the system if I felt I had a problem with one. Or just to run diagnostics on individual batteries without having to re wire the bank.

Here is an old writeup I did about my setup.
http://downeasteryachts.com/ar.....hives/2107