Paul, a 14 awg wire seems quite small for the loads - all summed together, apparently - that you're describing. As a consequence, you may be experiencing the flicker on the display, but unseen you may be placing the safety of your vessel at risk. Are you SURE that the wire size and circuit breaker size are proper for the SUM of all the currents these items consume??? It would be an interesting test to place a high quality voltmeter at the input to the C90 and see what voltage you have there when the A/P is engaged. My guess is that it will be very low.

You might also want to make sure the negative wiring - the ground wires - are properly sized. They must be at least the same size as the wires taking the power to the equipment.

I suggest that you get a book by Charlie Wing or Nigel Calder on boat electronics (sorry, I don't recall the names of the books) and use it to verify that you are using the proper size wire and CB for the loads. It is an acceptable procedure to connect the A/P to the battery via correctly-sized wiring and fuse. By all means, ALWAYS use marine quality wiring and hardware (terminals, splices, shrink tubing, etc) on a boat...DO NOT use household type wire and hardware, as it will only cause problems sooner rather than later.

Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual--very good book to have as a reference, it answers most if not all questions about either subject

Paul, the A/P is one of the heaviest power loads in the boat. That's why I think a 14 awg wire seems way too flimsy to use for it AND another (almost 3 amps, you say...that's what 32 watts at 12 volts almost is) critical power load as well. An important load like an A/P should be on its own circuit protection and its own wiring.

There's a third issue with having the A/P and your chartplotter on the same power source, and that is redundancy. If you have a fault in the A/P you will be unable to isolate it and so will lose your navigation at just the time you will be depending on everything else to work properly and get you home.

When I use the term 'circuit breaker' or 'cb', I refer to a resettable circuit protection device. Ideally, most equipment on the boat would be on cb's rather than inline fuses; this allows you to always shut the stuff off when you leave the boat and to know for sure that there is no current drain while you're away. But an inline fuse of the correct size will do just as well for anything that has its own On-Off switch, such as your CD player.

Your best bet is to read one of the recommended books - the Charlie Wing book "Boatowners Illustrated Handbook of Wiring" is fast and easy to read - and then draw your power distribution schematic on a sheet of paper, with the wires sizes shown. First, draw how the boat is presently wired; then draw your proposed modifications.

Always remember: 1) wire size is selected appropriate to the power required at the equipment, 2) that size is then increased for the length of the wire run; and 3) the circuit protection is sized for the *size of the wire*, not for the size of the equipment load.

Circuit protection is NOT there to protect the equipment at the end of the wire. It is there to prevent a fire, and thus to protect the boat and its crew.

Paul,
The best solution (not the easiest) would be to replace/upgrade the panel. The electrical loads of today's boats were not dreamed of in 1986. Another solution would be to move the battery switch to its own panel just below the electrical panel. That would give you more real estate to add breakers. You could use a piece of 1/4" smoked plastic to mount the breakers on, and then mount the plastic over the spot were the battery switch used to be. I've attached a pic of the panel I built for Julandra. You don't have to get as fancy, but it might give you some ideas. Hope this helps.

Paul,
I built it. Went to a local plastic shop and bought a piece of black/smoked plastic. Cut it to the same size as the old plastic insert. Too thin, and the plastic is easily broken. Too thick and the breakers don't work. I laid out the breakers and gauges on a large piece of paper, then transferred the final layout to the plastic. Moving the battery switch to a separate panel gives you tons of room. Even after 5-10 years of improvements, I still had a few spare breakers on the panel. The breakers were the only expensive part, but still a lot less than having a custom panel built by someone. Somewhere in the Upgrades section of the website is a link to the improvements I made to Julandra. There are a few pictures of the panel, front and back.

Why not just put it on your "Instruments" breaker/fuse? Then run the right sized wire to the AP. I agree, 14 ga. is too small for almost anything on our boat because of the distances involved. For instance, Catalina used 14 ga. for the lights and that's pretty shoddy when lights dim when another one is turned on!

You could also do what Tom suggest without doing all the work he did: buy a small subpanel and feed it off a breaker on your main panel, locate it anywhere it works for you. Many of our C34 skippers have done this.

I purchased a few of those green lights from Seaward a few years ago 'cuz when we bought our boat the old one had blown out. Not only is it a good reminder to me to turn off the DC power before I leave the boat, but it's also a great "night light!"

Paul,
I have hull 226 and there was already a conduit within the mast. i would be surprised to find out that you didn't already have one have you double checked to be sure there is not one present, if there is you should see rivets along the forward face of the mast spaced evenly down it's length. seem like i remember is starting not quite at the top of the mast so maybe you just overlooked it?
regards,