John Chadwick A dashboard with ample cutouts accessible from below.
Making boats and their systems more serviceable for boat owners and technicians should be a priority for everyone in the industry
It is easy at a boat show to be drawn into the excitement of what is new; after all that’s largely why we are there, to learn about our industry’s latest innovations. But as I walk the docks and see all the bright and shiny new things glittering in prospective boat owners’ eyes, I’m left thinking about that famous line from the 1980s Wendy’s ad: “Where’s the beef?”
From navigation electronics and lighting systems that dim and change colors to tables and TVs that appear at the press of a button, I’m wondering about the bits and pieces concealed behind consoles and ceilings that make all these modern wonders possible. Among the questions that invariably trouble my mind are: How do I diagnose that? What black box controls that? Where is it, and how do I access it? In a nutshell, how serviceable is this boat?
Serviceability likely isn’t the first thing the designer, builder, seller, or buyer considers, but it is a factor that can make modern boat ownership unaffordable. Frequently, it’s a cost that buyers—especially those new to boat ownership—only become aware of well after the purchase, and it can leave a bad taste in their mouths, not just about boating and boat ownership but about the industry as a whole.
As onboard systems become more complex and abundant, servicing them becomes more expensive and difficult. Advances in technology and equipment are, of course, inevitable, but our industry needs to pay attention to the corollary—the challenges of diagnosing and repairing the systems in today’s boats. Along with pricing potential boat owners out of the game, this issue is spoiling the dreams of new boat owners who otherwise might be lifelong repeat customers.
Old Boat vs. New Boat
Back in the day, as they say, boats were much simpler. I grew up in the 1960s in a boating family. We had a 1941 45′ (13.7m) Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, an 8′ (2.4m) lapstrake tender, and a 17′ (5.2m) lapstrake speedboat. The cabin cruiser had twin 150-hp engines, the tender a 3-hp outboard, and the speedboat a 25-hp outboard. Navigation electronics? The cabin cruiser had a fixed-mount compass at both helms. Navigating at night? No problem. Both compasses were backlit. That was it. The only “feature” on the speedboat was electric start.
Over the years, the boating industry introduced new products to the yachtsman. The early VHF radio was basically a box that would be bracket-mounted either on top of the dashboard or from the overhead. Wiring was exposed, with one cable run to the antenna on deck and the other to a 12V power source. We never had a VHF radio, but we were given a hand-me-down depth sounder, which was a larger box that was bracket-mounted. The wiring consisted of a cable to the transducer and a cable to a 12V power source, both exposed and openly accessible.
John Chadwick Wiring behind this easily opened electrical panel includes a readily accessible fuse block.
Older boats were generally built in one place, one at a time. After completing the hull, the builder applied paint and cabinetry; even engines, wiring, and plumbing may have been installed after construction of the boat was complete. By definition, systems installed after a boat is built are accessible; how else could workers install them if they couldn’t get them inside the boat? Modern boats are built very differently.
Advances in marine manufacturing and boatbuilding in recent decades have been dramatic. Building on lessons learned in automobile manufacturing, boatbuilders now use subassemblies built in specialty shops, and wiring harnesses made on jigs at purpose-built workstations. And equipment from manufacturers—sometimes custom-configured for the builder—are staged to be installed at the ideal point in the boatbuilding process for efficiency and workplace ergonomics.
Unlike older boats, whose equipment like radios and sounders were mounted in the open with exposed wiring, electronics and gear on much of today’s fleet are flush-mounted or installed completely out of sight and operated with a small panel-mounted remote. Increasingly, remote-control capability is built into multifunction displays mounted into the boat’s dashboard and/or helm station cabinetry, creating a seamless look and integrated user experience much like that of the modern automobile, smartphone, or tablet. Presented this way, potential buyers immediately see the benefit.
What they don’t see is the hidden cost down the road when any of these elements need to be repaired or replaced.
John Chadwick This removable panel is better than no access, but the wiring behind it is still crammed in, leaving little workable room.
From manufacturing, sales, or initial owner experience perspectives, these new technologies and methods make sense. If one can get past the sticker price, today’s boats are often better designed, better built, better equipped, and safer than their predecessors. As much as I loved the boats I grew up on, I don’t want to go back. But I do want to look at the modern boat critically and pragmatically—after the honeymoon is over, when one of those magical features fails, the owner seeks diagnostic and repair service, and once again faces sticker shock.
With production-built boats, the builder is rarely directly involved in the diagnosis and repair of problems in the field, unless the problem involves the boat’s design or construction. On new vessels, diagnosis and repair of equipment installed on the boat are generally the work of the dealer. But more often, sussing out and fixing an issue is the job of a full-service boatyard or an independent marine service technician. I’m in the latter category. My business is focused not on boat structures and engines, but on the systems installed and running behind the scenes. On most boats today, that means electrical and electronics systems and components.
Let’s walk through a relatively simple case I encountered last year on a nice 30′ (9.1m) weekender from a large builder with a great reputation. The reported issue was “reliability problems with SXM Weather.” On the boat, I found SXM radio working fine on the stereo but weather working properly on only one of the two multifunction displays (MFDs). The second MFD recognized an SXM receiver was connected, but no weather information was available, and this receiver had a different radio ID number than the SXM receiver that was connected to the first MFD. Apparently, there were two separate SXM receivers installed (we later observed that the two MFDs were part of two redundant, independent navigation systems).
To find the cause, we needed access to the back of the MFDs, the SXM receivers, and their associated wiring, including data networking cables. The first place to look seemed to be behind the dashboard (and in the end, that is where we found all the black boxes), but the builder had made no accommodation for accessing this area. So, we started by looking in every likely locker or panel with a hinge, latch, or visible screw, to no avail. Reluctantly and carefully, we tried removing some adjacent fixed bulkhead, ceiling, and overhead panels in the cabin in hopes one would open without breaking; not all panels are removable.
John Chadwick The SXM receiver is buried somewhere beneath a host of other electronic components; note that none of the cables are labeled.
After opening three such panels, we found the related fuse blocks but no black boxes. The fuses were all good, and the fuse blocks were neatly wired and labeled (very rare). But the difficulty we had accessing the fuses on the stationary boat led me to wonder how an owner could be expected to diagnose and replace something as basic as a fuse when the radar/chartplotter failed in fog while trying to enter a shifting inlet with seas building from an oncoming storm.
Eventually, there was no option but to explore behind the dashboard via the dreaded task of removing an MFD. Dreaded, because the bezel covering the mounting screws was very fragile and had been exposed to the elements for several years, the MFD was bedded with a highly adhesive sealant, and the lovely, shiny dashboard—or the MFD itself—could be easily scratched or damaged by a tool in the process of trying to break the adhesive bond.
The multiple black boxes we sought were all behind the dashboard, yet even with both MFDs removed, access to connections and mounting was very limited.
John Chadwick To access the SXM receiver, the VHF, AIS, and antenna splitter all must be disconnected and removed.
In the end, one of the SXM receivers had failed, quite possibly from heat in the tiny, unvented space the builder provided for these devices. The failed model was no longer avail-able. A new model SXM receiver was available for a reasonable price, but the older MFD would not support the newer receiver. The owners would have to live without the SXM weather receiver until they upgraded the electronics suite. (Normally, the two MFDs could share the SXM Weather data via networking, however this boat’s redundant and independent navigation systems precluded that, and they could not be on a common network.)
Now, step back from the details and look at the big picture: The problem was diagnosed but not resolved. We had spent hours on disassembly, a very brief time on actual diagnosis, and a few hours more putting everything back together properly. The customer was billed for a whole lot of work that had nothing to do with diagnosis and everything to do with lack of system information and access. In short, poor serviceability.
Striving for Serviceability
One way to think about serviceability is to put yourself in a service tech’s shoes. Once the problem and symptoms observed are reviewed with the owner, the technician must find the answer to questions that sound simple but almost always present great challenges in the field:
- What components of the system are malfunctioning?
- Where are these components mounted in the vessel?
- What is the power source?
- Where is the fuse or overcurrent protection device?
- How do I gain access to those locations?
- How are those components interconnected?
- How are those interconnections routed through the boat?
Note that none of the questions listed mentions the technology or training required; these obstacles are all about information and access, details that are unique to the particular boat. The answers are generally known only by the builder or aftermarket installer.
These questions may seem trivial, and the answers either unimportant or obvious, but having worked in the field professionally for 22 years, and with a lifetime of working on my own family’s boats, I can say without hesitation that they address the primary problems of escalating ownership costs related to diagnosing and resolving system problems. It’s worth repeating that I’m primarily referring to electrical and electronics systems, as there is hardly a single system on a modern boat that doesn’t rely on electricity and electronics to function.
Is there a better way? In modern manufacturing, virtually nothing is built before drawings are created and reviewed. We adopt the same protocol in marine systems; before building or installing anything, we design via drawings and review them. In addition to being a valuable reference tool, we recognized long ago it is less expensive to make mistakes on paper than in the field.
For one of our regular customers, several years ago we updated the navigation electronics, audio system, satellite phone, and battery charging systems. Before installing anything, we drew a set of schematics to indicate what components were to be included and how they were interconnected. (Routing of cables was not documented on this boat, as there are only a few routes that are easily found and have access hatches clearly visible.) As we have added equipment over the years, these schematics have saved us a substantial amount of time, and saved the customer money, because we had a roadmap to follow.
John Chadwick This diagram is part of the author’s schematic for a customer’s recreational fishing boat. Note how most of the key questions are answered on this one page: what is installed, where, and how components are interconnected.
Such documentation doesn’t just help us. This same customer moved the boat to another region for a month of fishing. When he returned, he told us about an electronics failure he experienced while out of town. When he called a local electronics technician, he supplied the tech with a copy of the schematics. After looking briefly at them, the technician said, “Oh, this is going to be easy!” The cost of creating the schematics paid for itself with that one service call. More importantly, the owner’s problem was quickly diagnosed and resolved, and he was promptly back out on the hot fishing grounds.
Owner’s Manual vs. Service Manual
I’ve owned many boats in my life. When I buy a boat, I usually purchase the service manual for the engine. While the document does not make me an engine mechanic, a service manual provides answers to many key questions involved when servicing an engine system: What components are installed? Where on the engine are they mounted? It provides exploded-view diagrams that indicate what must be removed to gain access to a given piece of equipment, and how. Interconnections are shown, whether they be mechanical (linkages, drivetrains, etc.), electrical, or even plumbing (cooling water, oil circulation, and the like).
It’s this access and interconnection guidance that makes a service manual so valuable and distinct from an owner’s manual. Owner’s manuals are important, but a modern boat, with its array of integrated systems, needs some sort of service manual for the boat’s systems as installed.
Some manufacturers have been doing a better job of creating more useful owner’s manuals to help boat owners understand how to operate the systems on the boat at a very high level. Others leave much to be desired. A few years ago, I was called to diagnose an electrical problem on a new 55′ (16.8m) Dutch motoryacht. It had arrived at a marina with a recently upgraded shore-power system, and every time the vessel’s shore-power cord was plugged into the dock pedestal, the dockside GFI (ground-fault interrupter) tripped.
The U.S. importer and broker were showing the boat. I asked to see what documentation they had aboard, and I was presented with approximately 10 three-ring binders, each three inches thick. They were filled with the owner’s manuals of all the individual pieces of equipment aboard the boat when it left the factory. None of them documented this equipment as a part of systems as installed on the boat.
The builder in the Netherlands would speak only to the salesman, and only via text messages. I had to dictate the request for wiring diagrams for the salesman to key into his phone’s text messaging app. Given the difference in time zones, we didn’t know when we might get a response or if it would be helpful. The testing required to diagnose this particular problem is rather straightforward; however, somewhere between the shore-power inlet and the AC main panel, an unknown device or devices were breaking continuity and inhibiting testing.
Eventually, we received some pertinent schematics, but they were extremely abstract, and with no theory of operation provided, we essentially had to perform reverse engineering to determine what we were looking at, what it represented physically on the boat, and how to bypass it all for testing. In the end, we found the problem: The Seakeeper stabilizer power had been miswired accidentally at the factory. It was quickly corrected, but only after two full days aboard the boat, with each day including six hours of round-trip travel.
Modern boats are complex, integrated systems. They need as-installed documentation—in other words, service manuals.
Thinking Beyond the Build
Much goes into the design of how a boat will be built. But how much thought goes into how the boat will be serviced once the boat is in the hands of an owner? We discussed how wiring harnesses are often installed most efficiently early in the build. Consequently, they are often routed behind permanent structures where they can never again be accessed, or they are secured to that structure during installation and so can never be pulled out. And frequently there is no means to run a snake or fish tape to pull a replacement cable.
Designers and builders should plan for how any piece of equipment installed will be serviced in the field by answering a battery of questions: How accessible are the key service points? Can enclosures be physically removed in the available space? Can a technician get into a position where he can see what he is working on while also getting two hands on it? And can a technician do all that safely?
We faced such a consideration two years ago retrofitting DC power equipment in a 1960 vintage 41′ (12.5m) sailboat. The only feasible location for the equipment was in a place that would only permit the technician to reach it with one hand, and the service points (electrical connections) would mostly be out of sight. Our solution to the problem was to pre-mount the components on a removable mounting board, make all the connections prior to installing the assembly, and leave a long enough service loop for the external wiring to allow the whole assembly to be easily slid into place and secured. Servicing the equipment now is accomplished by sliding the mounted unit out for access.
John Chadwick Only one hand at a time can reach the essential electrical system components and connections in this compartment.
John Chadwick To improve access, the author installed the new equipment with extra wire length on a mounting panel.
John Chadwick Now, the new gear can be housed in the same space but be easily serviced by removing the panel.
Another customer’s boat, a 65′ (19.8m) motoryacht, had cameras installed to allow the helmsman to monitor guests in the salon and on the aft and upper decks while under way. The salon camera failed, and the replacement camera was not working due to low voltage at the camera. The owner had young grandchildren, so a solution was a safety priority for him.
Because the camera wiring had been installed in the boat before the extensive hardwood interior was built there was no means of access. The builder was helpful but offered no practical solutions, given how the wiring was installed. Further, the interior was built in a manner that left no alternative wiring paths.
Over a period of weeks, we worked multiple days attempting to diagnose the problem. During that time, we were also trying to locate the power supply that fed the camera, but the builder couldn’t provide advice on that either. Tracing wiring was always futile, as it disappeared into structure. Eventually, while working on another project, I came across some mysterious power supplies under the helm, hidden behind some air conditioning equipment. Testing proved them to be the camera power supplies, and one was only putting out 7VDC.
We replaced cheap 120VAC-12VDC power supplies for all four cameras with a dedicated camera fuse block fed by the boat’s existing 12VDC power system. Rather than hiding the fuse block behind the air conditioning system, we installed it 2′ (.6m) away on an empty, accessible expanse of bulkhead. The fuse block and wiring are now labeled, the location has been photographed, and the circuits have been added to the boat’s collection of schematics.
Modern boats are, like modern automobiles, becoming integrated systems of systems. Auto manufacturers develop a detailed service plan before any car goes into production. Boatbuilders need to do the same. This includes making appropriate documentation available to the technicians who need this information to efficiently and effectively diagnose and repair systems in the field.
But service planning is not just the responsibility of the boatbuilders. We all have a role to play. Systems integrators design, program, and sometimes install complex systems on behalf of boatbuilders and/or major retrofit boatyards. They must include service planning in the sys-tems that they design, and they must create the supporting documentation and make it available to the technicians who diagnose, repair, and add to these systems in the field. Installers also have a role to play, as the as-installed schematic I provided earlier in this story illustrates.
And let’s not forget the manufacturers of marine equipment. If you’ve recently installed a navigation light on a boat, then you probably understand the challenge of making a reliable connection to the fixture’s pigtails that are too short to work with and too thin to effect a solid and reliable crimp connection in the field, especially when the boatbuilder installed exactly enough wire to reach the original fixture’s pigtails, and not one millimeter more.
John Chadwick This schematic created for a Moody 38 shows the NMEA 2000 wire and cable routing and related equipment locations. Up-to-date records like these are helpful to boat owners and service technicians.
Making Serviceability an Industry Conversation
In a recent Soundings Trade Only article, American Boat & Yacht Council President John Adey said, “A smart system anticipates upgrades and improvements.” He was writing about marine power sources, but his comment is absolutely pertinent to this discussion.
In the same magazine, Correct Craft’s Bill Yeargin noted, “Substantially growing your organization likely won’t come just from getting better; it will come from meeting unmet needs.”
I cannot think of a single greater unmet need in the boating industry than resolving the problems of serviceability in the modern boat.
Whether you are a builder, installer, or systems integrator, what do you do to ensure that your end product will be easily serviceable in the field? What documentation do you create to enhance serviceability? How do you make it available to your customers and the field technicians who support them? Let me know. I want this article to be the beginning of a constructive conversation in our industry, and I want to spread our collective thoughts and practical solutions in future issues of Professional BoatBuilder.
About the Author: With a degree in electrical and computer engineering, John Chadwick began his career designing systems for defense contractors, later working for a dot-com startup on Wall Street. When the bubble burst, he redesigned and rebuilt the electrical and electronic navigation systems on a 1986 Tartan 40 he had purchased. This grew into a new business, Coastal Marine Systems LLC, where he continues to design, document, install, and configure custom marine electrical and electronic systems for boat owners and boatyards.
