Charlie Andrews

'Buying a boat is like ripping up five pound notes under a cold shower' is what my mother told me when I informed her of my decision to invest in Vigilanter, the 24 foot motor sailor.

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When I first plugged her into shore power, the electricity was playing up and a fizzing noise was coming from a few of the sockets. Never being one to sit around and wait for a problem to get worse, I decided to take action, borrowing 'Electric Wiring: Domestic' from the library. By the time I felt confident enough in my knowledge of electrical wiring, we were experiencing frequent power cuts. The boat had no fuse box, which was a potential hazard. I decided to install a consumer unit, with an RCD, an MCB and an RCBO. An RCBO is like an MCB, but also protects against earth faults. With a line of RCBO's, you can locate the earth fault with a greater degree of ease as you know which circuit it's on. As I only have 2 circuits, I only needed one RCBO to locate the fault through process of elimination.

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I installed the consumer unit in the dark, with a torch in my mouth because another power cut had happened just as night was falling after a long day of stripping wires and installing sockets.

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An oven and a fridge were also installed, making the whole place feel quite homely. The only major project left to do is insulation, as even in the south, it gets quite cold in the winter and keeping the radiator on constantly is not good for my carbon footprint.

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