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Picked up title to a 2001 BW Conquest 23 ft, with 225 Merc on the back. Been a rarely used lift boat for most of its life with 167 hours on her. Having to do a few minor things but should be sea worthy in a few weeks. Survey was excellent, and onwre put about 3k into her before i bought to fix issues related to installing batteries backwards. New to this ocean stuff and the boat so any help would be appreciated.
Welcome to the club and boat ownership. I believe your first task is to crawl over the entire boat, open all the hatches and every cupboard. Once familiar with the layouts and locations of the boat and accessories completely familiarize yourself with the electrical system. Off/on all the switches, see what they do (sometimes you may activate a switch and you do not see anything happening.....may be an extra switch or activating an accessory not easily noticed). Locate all the circuit breakers, fuses, junction areas, etc..... and make a schematic (or at least put to memory). Purchase fuses and have tools readily available for swapping fuses and electrical work. Know which breaker goes where. In case you lose a function you will know exactly where to go to trouble shoot. More importantly, in case of an electrical cross connection (+ to -) you can kill the source immediately. You mentioned $3000 of electrical work from previous owner installing a battery back wards. That being the case, I would take the time to individually inspect (as best I could) all the exposed wires to see if any signs from melting the insulation. Even though a wire tests as ok....it may be compromised from heat and could be an accident waiting to happen. So you know....there are two wiring systems on a boat. One system for the motor/starting. A second system for boat accessories. Chances are you have more than one battery and you will have some battery switches (Perko or Blue Sea) that cross connect the batteries. Get very familiar with their use and function.
I marked my circuit breakers in the cabin (1979 22' Revenge) with a permanent magic marker. My dash board switches are identified with tabs I made with my tab making tool. Electronic suppliers also have some small identification stickers with stick-um on the backside that you can use that stand up pretty well that do not take up a lot of space.
