Old wiring, years of owner add-ons and long Chicago winters add up. BoatWired rewires boats, adds circuits and repairs electrical systems for Chicago boat owners. We work to ABYC standards, with every circuit sized correctly, protected and labeled at both ends.
Signs your boat needs rewiring
- Green, crusty or heat-discolored terminals behind the panel or at the batteries
- Household-style wire, wire nuts or electrical tape anywhere on board
- Breakers that trip with no clear cause, or circuits nobody can identify
- Flickering electronics or voltage that drops when a pump or windlass runs
- Wiring chewed by rodents during winter storage (more common than most owners think)
Plan the rewire for the off-season
A complete rewire takes time, and in Chicago the best time is while the boat is on the hard. If we plan it in fall or winter, we can do the work at your storage yard or shed with no pressure on the schedule, and the boat is ready for spring commissioning instead of losing weeks of a short season. Smaller additions and repairs can happen any time, at your slip.
What we do
- Complete rewires: we remove old and undocumented wiring and install properly sized tinned marine wire, with correct overcurrent protection and labels on both ends.
- Upgrades and additions: new circuits, outlets, lighting, pumps and equipment, integrated cleanly into your existing panels instead of piggybacked onto them.
- Panels and distribution: AC and DC distribution panels, breakers, bus bars, battery switches and main disconnects.
- Repairs: corroded connections, chafed runs, failed terminals and the shorts they cause.
Done to the standard, and documented
Every job follows ABYC standards: correct wire gauge for the load and run length, protection close to the source, proper routing and support, and connections made with the right terminals and heat shrink. When we rewire a boat we leave it serviceable, so the next person working on it (including us) can see what every wire does.
Request a quote and tell us about your boat, or ask us to look at the system before you commit to a full rewire.