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I think that, at this point, you don't really know what's true from mechanic #1 or #2. It's possible one or both were somehow incompetent or unqualified. Start with a new mechanic and only describe the symptoms. You may have to go backwards to go forwards.

Can you post your success/failures of running wiring through here if you get a chance? I tried doing this last year and ran out of time and patience.

You are correct on all counts. The side door isn't needed, but is convenient for getting some things on and off the boat. There's no discount for removing it, so I'll keep it. I had a C28 MkI (looks like a C34 Mk1.5, but smaller) and entered and existed from the stern. It does get tedious tying up the stern, especially when it's below zero and the lines are snow covered. The nice thing with the swim ladder and a wing keel is (if you can get it down) you don't need a ladder.

I would imagine you can just but a new cover and keep the existing frame. Might save you a little.

I also have a toe-rail cover that the PO bought that I'm selling. I don't like it, but that doesn't mean it's not useful for someone.

Purchasing a Fairclough cover for our C34 MKII and was wondering if anyone else would be interested.

Price was quoted to me as $4005 with the ability to store with the mast up or down. If you don't store with your mast up, it's about $750 less ($3250 ish). Price is good until 9/1. They also have the ability to add different features like extra doors, accommodations for dinghy davits, motor davits, radar masts, and other things.

In case you're wondering I have no affiliation with Fairclough other than I really liked the cover I had for my C28.

Has anyone used AllState? I got a very low proposal offer, but is it too good to be true?
Any other suggestions?

Allstate is terrible insurance. There's a reason their rates are so low. I had them for 22 years for home/auto/umbrella and one claim *doubled* my premium.

Yes Noah, he uses the port locker.
I would think you would want to have some additional venting if it was
stored with gas in it. I had never seen a 2000 in a port locker before and
thought it was interesting.

When looking for a MkII over the last few years, I saw this done in probably a quarter of the boats we looked at. I'm not sure that it's the best idea, but it looks fairly common.

I have a Flexofold as pictured. Jim has Max Prop.

Sorry, mixed them up. Noah, any advice on where to buy flexofold these days? I did some googling and did not see much.

Reach out to them directly. Earlier this year I got a quote for a Flexofold 3 blade. They said it would take 3 days to make it and 3 days shipping from Denmark to the East Coast of the US

girm : You didn't mention what type of auto pilot (wheel or steering below).

To get power aft I ran a wire from the batteries (fused) under the aft cabin that way. Much easier that going from the Main Electrical panel.

I also took power from the main electrical panel and went up and then along the cabin to hull joint, thru the head, thru the side locker, to power an aft Loran/GPS repeater.

I like your suggestion of routing the power along the cabin to hull joint. I really want it to come from the electrical panel so that I can turn things on and off from there. The EV-100 draws power, even in standby, and I'd rather be able to shut that off somehow. Not to mention there are already a lot of connections at the battery already (Charging leads, battery voltage monitoring for the panel, main electrical switch, and the Siren Marine monitoring station)

I have the EV-100 installed on my 2006 MKII and it is on a separate breaker on the panel. I'm installing a Balmar battery monitor in the panel this weekend and will have everything exposed so will try to help you out with some pictures from my boat. The install was done professionally before I bought the boat. I'll try to get something posted this weekend.

Let me know when you have the pictures, I would like to see how you did it.

I remember having to deal with this issue, because the top of the nav station Formica ran all the underneath the electrical panel.  Damned if I remember what we did, it was somebody else's boat!   

Stu,

Thanks for the response. You're right about the position of the electrical panel - and I believe it's fiberglass and not formica, but I don't know that for sure. It might be part of the fiberglass insert, for all I know. I haven't taken enough of it apart yet. (For now, the Admiral as forbidden any exploratory surgery with the oscillating multitool... What good is having a cutting tool if you're not allowed to cut anything?!?)

I would snoop around in this area to see what you can find as far as pre-drilled holes into the panel area and see if you can find out a good route.

I have stared at this for a while and thought about using fish tape to thread that part of it. Unfortunately, I can't see where it goes back behind the nav station to get the other end going toward the back of the boat. I suppose I could use the PO's retrofit wire as the messenger line for the new cable, but part of me feels like that's giving up on understanding exactly what's going on back there.

How the heck do you get to the wires that come up behind the chart table and into the electrical panel?

After spending a couple of hours looking and re-looking over how I'm going to route power to the new autopilot I'm installing on the boat, I've come to the conclusion that I'm in over my head. But I'm also ready to admit than and move forward. Since I already installed an EV-100 on my Catalina28, I knew the steps involved, and none of them were overly complicated. The one thing that I wanted to do differently was to run a separate power feed to the autopilot instead of leeching off of the instruments' power like I did on the 28.

First step was to take a look that the pedestal wiring - something that tripped me up with the install on the 28. It looks like there's adequate space to route the extra wires, but everything is sealed in silicone. Not my favorite, but manageable. Next I traced the wires back to the electrical panel. At some point, they disappear behind some fiberglass and appear in the electrical panel. I can't seem to get to that part of the run, however.

A PO ran a new wire to a fan in the aft cabin, so I figured running another wire was doable. But I can't figure out how to get to the electrical wire once it goes back behind the nav table. There's a lot of holes where the cables come up into the electrical area, but where they go into the holes seems to be a completely inaccessible area. There are no messenger lines and no obvious screws, so I feel like I'm missing something completely obvious.

I looked in a bunch of the wiki and 101 articles as well as searching the website (you can imagine there are a lot of articles about electrical and wiring, so I haven't gone through them all), but i can't seem to find what I'm looking for. Is it just a matter of pulling new wires where an old wire exists now? I'd rather do some cleanup of the cable management here, that's why I'm looking for a way into this space.

Have you watched any of Sail Life on the youtubes? 

<Wears "Oh Glorious Sanding tshirt> 

Not to beat a dead horse, but here's a story.

Wife grew up on a boat, and I came to sailing later in life. After 2 years of dinghy sailing lessons and then basic keelboat, we set out to search for our perfect sailboat - a Catalina 30. After three months and dozens of boats, we found nothing that met even our preliminary requirements, my father in law took us aside and asked us this:

"Do you want to spend your time shopping or sailing?"

The point was clear - much like the Pardys "Go small, go simple, go now." We ended up buying a Catalina 28MkI that was seaworthy, but met maybe half of our earlier "requirements". The difference was that we would be on the water in August, with plenty of a season left. We probably put 20k into that boat over the 6 years we owned her and sold her for $18k last year. (Again, did we want to wait for the most amount of money we could get, or did we want to buy a 34?) If we were a bit more selective about the first boat we bought, there were pitfalls that we could have avoided. But then, it would have taken longer to find the right boat. In the end, we had a lot of fun on the 28 and made her a much better boat than when we found her. I wouldn't trade those experiences for any amount of time or money.

I'm not trying to put down your list - these are things that you absolutely need to know about your boat. Clearly you need a boat that is seaworthy. But with a list of requirements this stringent, you're going to shopping for a while. Do you want to shop for boats or sail them?

So as a follow up, I would probably put threaded rod the next time I have to do this. I also realized, once I got most of the handrail on, that the crossthreading happened because the hand rail isn't quite bent into position to fit the holes accurately. When I got to that last hole that was crossthreaded, I put the screw in and started tightening and realized that it was crossthreaded. Looking at it topside, the handrail was slightly off azis from the hole. Getting a helper got the handrail in position and the screw in correctly.

The other thing that the threaded rod gives you is the ability to do this without an assistant. Something I desperately needed. The person who helped me asked "How were you going to get this done without me? There's no way that would have worked without help!" I don't disagree.

Thanks for all your help!

Less Leaky,
Mark