[ctj1950]

Grounding, bonding, AC neutral and green wire ground, and DC minus.

On my 1976 gulfstar I just replaced all my thru hulls and seacocks. *When I was taking them apart I noticed that the chain plates were tied to the seacocks and the seacocks were tied to the backing plate for my cutlass bearing. *All these were daisy-chained from bow to stern.

*I don't understand bringing the energy from a lightning strike down to a thruhulls? I would think you would want to run the lightning protection directly to the backing plate.

*The DC minus was tied to the engine block and the AC green wire ground and neutral went back to shore power. I believe these are correct.

All the bonding wires were either *broken or disconnected or corroded. These I'm pulling out and replacing with new. *I'm also going to replace the backing plate with a 3/8 bronze plate. *And I'm redoing my DC primary wiring.

I pretty well understand how most of this should be except for the chain plates/seacocks. *The chain plate wire is for lightning protection? *The seacocks wire is bonding for stray currents. *Should these two be tied together? * Can I run all these wires to a terminal block, and then a single wire to the backing plate? *Or should the lightning and bonding be run separate to the plate?

Also what size wire should I be using?
I understand that the AC and DC should never be tied together.