[jarcher]

2 wires through 1 cable clam, no leaks, one vhf coax and one 16-4 for steaming, spreader, anchor lights

How does this thing work to not leak? I can't tell from the pictures what's going on there. How does that diaphragm seal around the wires?

 

[hellosailor]

Kinda like a wad of chewing gum surrounded by a compression collar. The wires go through the chewing gum, the compression collar keeps it squeezed tightly against the wires, and Bob's your uncle.

(Whatever does that mean, anyway?)

 

[jarcher]

Kinda like a wad of chewing gum surrounded by a compression collar. The wires go through the chewing gum, the compression collar keeps it squeezed tightly against the wires, and Bob's your uncle.

(Whatever does that mean, anyway?)

So do we need a new one each season, or each time we pull the wires up for any reason? Is it big enough to get connectors through?

Thanks!

 

[imagine2frolic]

Imagine has what one poster called the swan's neck. I've been in some snotty weather beating, and never a drop has entered the boat......i2f

 

[imagine2frolic]

One last thought.....the cable once entering the boat drops below the roof, and then loops back up. Just in case water would intrude it won't follow the cable to the equipment with this loop hanging down.......i2f

 

[jarcher]

One last thought.....the cable once entering the boat drops below the roof, and then loops back up. Just in case water would intrude it won't follow the cable to the equipment with this loop hanging down.......i2f

Good point, I think that's called a "drip loop."

 

[asdf38]

This is an old thread but it's one of the best on this subject so I wanted to continue it. It's amazing to me how tricky it is to find the right solution for marine connectors and deck fittings. As an aside I just bought the standard perko two prong deck connector, for my autohelm and the quality is fine but it has no polarity protection! You have to be kidding me, that didn't occur to me as a possible problem. I'm actually going to look up my auto helm and decide whether I think it can take an accidental reverse polarity hit (I tend to think any good marine equipment should).

Anyway, has anyone recently sourced this Elvabro fitting, it looks great - simple, no line snags? And/or a swan-neck fitting?

Ok I see a few swan neck sources but they are all in the uk?
38mm Swan Neck - Stainless Steel | Marine Equipment
Stainless Steel Swan Neck Cable Outlet - Other Hardware - Marine Chandlery - Marine Supplies and Sailing Products
Piplers SWAN NECK CABLE GLAND, Polished Stainless Steel - Only £29.99 - Piplers of Poole

 

[mitiempo]

I purchased a Cableport based on this thread when it was current. Well made, easy to use, large enough hole for connectors to fit through and not very expensive really. I bought from Salty John: Cableport and other fine boat and yacht chandlery products.
Once it is installed on the deck the top can be removed to access wires for rig removal etc and the seal of the lower to deck is not disturbed.

It seems to have gone up in price a bit and they currently don't have stock according to the website. When I bought mine they said it would take 5 days from the UK to Canada and they were right! Good service.

 

[mitiempo]

The swan necks you linked to look good but pretty high profile.

Here's a pic of an interesting solution on an Atlantic. Looks pretty leakproof but also looks easy to trip over.

 

[hellosailor]

asdf-
If you have no reverse polarity protection and you want to add it, you can usually do that effecitvely for under $5 in parts. You install a zener diode just before the point where you want protection (i.e. on the DEVICE side of the plugs) and then install a fast-blow fuse just upstream of that, closer to the battery, in the positive line. (Although either line would do.)

You choose a zener that has a reverse-voltage rating just high enough so it doesn't conduct in normal use. Then if the cable that has the zener installed in it is connected backwards, the diode conducts, acts like a short circuit, and blows the fuse.

This is called a "crowbar" protection circuit, because it literally acts like someone has thrown a crowbar across the power lines and blown the fuse. the hardest parts are finding just one zener diode at a reasonable cost, and installing it correctly. You get it backwards, you blow the fuse immediately, you reverse the diode and now you know it works.(G)

OR, it your device can tolerate a little less than full power supply, you can install a simple full-wave rectifier (bridge rectifier) in the device side of the cable. That way you are pretending the cable is supplying AC, and ensuring that only the "correct" DC will get to the device, no matter how it is plugged in. That's another $2-3 part, the onloy drawback is that it will reduce your DC supply voltage by something like 1/2-1 volt.

The crowbar appraoch doesn't reduce your supply voltage at all.

If any of that sounds like Greek to you, any marine radio or radar tech should be able to come install it for you in 1/2 hour or so, any tv repairman if you can still find one of those.

 

[asdf38]

asdf-
If you have no reverse polarity protection and you want to add it, you can usually do that effecitvely for under $5 in parts. You install a zener diode just before the point where you want protection (i.e. on the DEVICE side of the plugs) and then install a fast-blow fuse just upstream of that, closer to the battery, in the positive line. (Although either line would do.)

You choose a zener that has a reverse-voltage rating just high enough so it doesn't conduct in normal use. Then if the cable that has the zener installed in it is connected backwards, the diode conducts, acts like a short circuit, and blows the fuse.

This is called a "crowbar" protection circuit, because it literally acts like someone has thrown a crowbar across the power lines and blown the fuse. the hardest parts are finding just one zener diode at a reasonable cost, and installing it correctly. You get it backwards, you blow the fuse immediately, you reverse the diode and now you know it works.(G)

OR, it your device can tolerate a little less than full power supply, you can install a simple full-wave rectifier (bridge rectifier) in the device side of the cable. That way you are pretending the cable is supplying AC, and ensuring that only the "correct" DC will get to the device, no matter how it is plugged in. That's another $2-3 part, the onloy drawback is that it will reduce your DC supply voltage by something like 1/2-1 volt.

The crowbar appraoch doesn't reduce your supply voltage at all.

If any of that sounds like Greek to you, any marine radio or radar tech should be able to come install it for you in 1/2 hour or so, any tv repairman if you can still find one of those.

Hey HelloSailor,

Thanks for pointing this out, I actually design computer hardware and have done some 12V design. So now that you started the discussion indulge me on a long post. It's funny because I actually hadn't really thought to go down this road because I wasn't happy to be dealing with it. A good connector is all I need but it's really tricky to find the right ones.

Note with the perko connector you can't actually seat the connector in reverse, but nothing stops you from touching the contacts and briefly shorting in reverse. Also there are no visual indicators so trial and error will result in a reverse 50% of the time.

As for the diode crowbar you don't need the zener unless you want to protect against over-voltage as well, a regular diode or schottky diode (rated for >12V which almost any diode would be) will do the job (positioned with the arrow pointing at 12V so with normal polarity it doesn't conduct, with reverse polarity it does). Anyway, again the connector makes it so easy to connect up-side down I can't blow a fuse every time this happens.

The rectifier is a good idea that would solve the problem but as you say, it cuts the voltage by two diode drops. The advantage of the rectifier would be that the circuit will work correctly no matter what the polarity which would be great if the connector did in-fact seat in reverse. However since it doesn't it's not quite required.

If I were completely unwilling to tolerate voltage drop one solution would be PFET transistors. Unfortunately the body-diode would conduct in reverse so you'd need two back to back. Mosfet's can also be a bit fragile however there are great integrated MOSFET power switches which protect themselves against everything - temperature and over-current. 12V Power would pass drain to source to source to drain with both gates tied to what is supposed to be GND. If it's connected correctly both PFET's would turn on and there would be near 0 voltage drop. In reverse they would be totally off. Small solid state relays and/or other integrated solutions probably do exist that would make this even easier.

Note that whether a voltage drop over the diode matters depends on the load. Few devices will run off 12V directly so they need to convert the voltage down. If they do it with linear supplies they just burn up excess power. Sending them a lower voltage actually has 0 impact (until a point). However if they use more efficient switching supplies, the load current will depend on input voltage and will go up if voltage goes down. In this case the diode will matter. Given that the autohelm is mechanical I might guess it's running it's motors off 12V directly in which case a reduced input voltage will have a negative impact.

....But I think my best bet would simply be to put a schottky diode in series with 12V on the Autohelm. A good schottky will only drop ~0.3V.

For electronic stuff Digi-Key is a fantastic source (basically the McMaster of electronics). However, of course none of it is designed for marine applications specifically. Digi-key actually has plenty of connectors rated for harsh environments but wading through their selection, the selction of each end, the pins, the strain relief etc can be a huge pain which is why I went with the perko.

Here is a diode that's a candidate (I filtered for through hole, 20V-60V, 10A to 30A), however let's audit it's supposed 12A rating. At 12A it specifies a 0.55V drop which would be 6.6W. This is a lot. It specifies that it rises 10.5 degrees C for every watt so that means it will rise 70C or 160 degrees F!, at 80 degrees ambient this is above boiling, not good. However the part is rated for 150C so it can technically handle it. I'll check my autohelm to see what it actually draws, it may be a lot less than 12A average. (Note, adding another diode in parallel isn't very effective)
Digi-Key - SB1245CT-ND (Manufacturer - SB1245)

An example of an integrated power switch:
http://www.st.com/internet/com/TECHNICAL_RESOURCES/TECHNICAL_LITERATURE/DATASHEET/CD00002198.pdf

The perko connector in question:
Amazon.com: Perko 1190DP0CHR 12V Marine Watertight Deck Connection: Sports & [email protected]@[email protected]@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41NDZCA%[email protected]@[email protected]@41NDZCA%2BuiL

 

[asdf38]

I contacted Salty John in the U.K. and he said they have the cableports in stock and have changed their website to reflect it. It is a bit pricey but I think it's the best long-term solution. I look forward to not dealing with deck connectors again.

Salty John: Cableport and other fine boat and yacht chandlery products.

 

[asdf38]

Just got the Cableport from Salty John's. Here are some additional pictures for those interested. It comes with 6 self-tapping screws to go into the deck but I do not plan to use them.

I intend to go through the deck with #10 screws over-drill and epoxy fill the holes. I'll use butyl to seal the hardware and the cableport itself. Unless someone suggests a better solution. My only hesitation is putting 6 new holes in my deck. Perhaps I'll consider mounting with only the inner 3.

 

[asdf38]

Here it is mounted on the boat. I ended up tapping #10 screws into epoxy with lots of Butyl. Very happy with it.

 

[ParadiseParrot]

Waterproof Connectors | The Electrical Resource

couple hundred choices here without the Marine markup

 

[redline]

Thought I'd add my $0.02, to the through-deck debate (not so much about connectors) as I faced this question last spring when I added radar (one of those "might as well" projects while the mast was down).

The boat came to me with five (yes, 5) little metal flange/grommet fittings, which I never particularly liked as they didn't seal all that well (especially the one with the somewhat-flat 3-conductor cable), and they meant coax plugs had to be removed to pull them out. But I was stuck with the five center holes and the three screws on each flange. More annoyingly, the holes were pretty much over an interior bulkhead, so they were drilled down through the deck then sideways inside to access the wiring. To this I needed to add a 1/2" thick radar cable, and (in yet another "might as well") a new cable for a future loudhailer and a spare Cat5). Existing cables included VHF, TV/FM, masthead wind, anchor light, steaming/decklight and a masthead factory spare (for those keeping score, that made 6 cables in 5 fittings, and the one with two cables especially didn't seal well).

Eventually I settled on three of the large Blue Seas Cable Clam, combined with trimming the flanges on two of the remaining metal passthroughs to fit everything in the available footprint and cover all the old holes. I redrilled the cable holes larger and at an angle so the cables no longer need to make a turn in the deck itself. Putting three cables through a CableClam is a bit of a challenge but it does work. I spent an entire evening measuring cable diameters and calculating the best combinations for each. I'm happy with the end result, nothing leaks and I can pull lthe VHF, TV and (especially!) Radar cables out with their connectors intact. And I don't think it looks horrible, either, even if, 9 cables is a bit much.

(the rope wound around the cables exiting the mast was my 5-year-old's handiwork, not normally present.)