Dear Kevin,
Last summer, I purchased a new aluminum fishing boat. It’s great, but I screwed up by “cheaping out” at the last minute. I passed on the trolling motor package and – as you’ve probably guessed – now want to add a trolling motor.
As a long time reader, I know that you are a big fan of Motorguide trolling motors and I’ll be buying one in the next couple weeks. My question concerns the boat wiring.
The Motorguide will be bow mounted, but since I didn’t get the trolling package, the only wire at the bow is a 16 gauge pair for the Attwood LED navigation light. But, according to your boat wiring size calculator, the trolling motor should be wired with 6 gauge.
Is there any way to make the smaller wire work? I hate to start rewiring a brand new boat if I can avoid it.
Thanks.
Sean
Hi Sean,
Since your boat is new, you may be in luck. A lot of boat builders now use Ancor’s new Nanotech Wire. As you’d guess from the name, it uses nanotechnology to solve problems just like yours.
Simply put, Nanotech Wire matches wire size to power demand by moving copper to where it is most needed – sort of a Viagra for marine electrical.
In the past, running a trolling motor on undersized wire caused voltage drops, heat buildup and embarrassing insurance claims. But now, that same temperature increase signals Nanotech Wire to deploy an army of nanobots who quickly rebuild the harness to match the power demand. While at work, these little guys make the wire looks like a python that swallowed a large rat.
Once your harness is properly sized, the same bots then go to work on its insulation so that it correctly corresponds to standard boat wiring colors.
The patented process is called Nanotech Overload Sensing Heat Induced Tranference and it works great. The only time I’ve seen it fail is when there are so many accessories turned on that there is no extra copper available. If this happens a lot, I usually recommend the addition of a copper reservoir to supply additional material as needed.
Have an excellent day.
Kevin
