My 380 Searay Sundancer AV System

Here are some images and the schematic for the AV and sound system I've added to my 2000 380 Searay Sundancer.

The impedus was our daughter came aboard and turned up her nose to the factory sound system. She wanted good sound and a place to plug-in her iPhone. She now has two iPhone locations.

My system has 1,400W for the four cockpit speakers, 400W for the cockpit subwoofer, 500W for the four salon speakers and and 200W for the two bow speakers.

Both televisions are piped in, as is the Blu-ray and the video also plays on the E120 navigation system. It has Sirius radio and Sirius weather shows on the navigation screen.

My boat has three group 31 batteries feeding the bank w/ the sound system. I can easily hook-in two more group 31s. Plus there is a generator as-required to top off the batteries.

It sounds pretty good to me. It has decent volume level available. I am happy with the final result.

 

Thanks.

Here is my E120 w/ Sirius weather display. It was really neat to watch the hurricane travel up the coast. It is real-time dead-nuts accurate. It is VERY handy!

 

Here's one.

These images show soldered, staggered Western Union splices covered w/ adhesive-lined shrink tubing and strain relieved by folding on itself retained w/ nylon wire ties.

 

Here's another.

The factory built my 2000 with one external amplifier and wired the amp enable to the stereo. My boat had three listening areas, the forward Master Stateroom, the Salon / Galley and the cockpit. So, if I wanted to listen in one area I had to do a front / rear fade operation. It was a pain in the butt.

The 2001 and later years used two amplifiers and brought the stereo amp enable output to a pair of rocker switches at the salon entrance. A flip of the switch would enable or kill the sound above (in the cockpit) or below (in the salon + master stateroom).

When I called Searay parts it was over $100 for the parts to add that switch assembly to upgrade my boat to include those matching switches! $$$ The Internet is a great thing and I was able to locate those matching Italian-made Vimar switches and switch plate for about a third the cost, still expensive but much more paletable. I purchased the small "SALON" and "COCKPIT" labels from the dealership. They were reasonably priced.

My setup also permits the manually-placed loose bow speakers to be used in the salon, if the master stateroom speakers need to stay off.



Here are images of that part of the upgrade.

 

My six flooded cell group 31 batteries were getting tired, so I upgraded them to six group 31 Lifeline GPL-31XT AGM batteries. I selected these because they have ~25% more Ampere-hour capacity than all the other competitive AGM batteries.

The battery chemistry change forced me to change the selection in my 50A Charles 5000 SP charger. Naturally they put the selection switch on the back side, forcing me to remove the contactor cover it is bolted onto, then removing the charger, sliding the switch and putting it all back together again.

The top of the batteries is different from the prior batteries, focing me to redo all the cables, snipping-off the battery clamps and using terminals instead. The cables are all 2/0 AWG. Fortunately I have a nice T&B TBM6 crimper w/ appropriately sized dies for an excellent crimp.

My very strong recommendation is to use Ancor adhesive-lined heavy-wall battery cable shrink tubing to protect the crimp at this connector. This is way thicker than standard heat shrink tubing w/ lots more glue. The glue was oozing out at the cable and the terminal after shrinking. Make certain a large heat gun is used to the battery cable, my small one didn't cut it, my big one did the trick.

When I cut off the old connector, the 12 year old battery wire looked brand new, in this marine environment, because the factory also used this to protect the original battery terminal connections.


Six Lifeline GPL-31XT Batteries



T&B TBM6 Crimper onto 2/0 Cable Terminal



T&B TBM6 Crimper Completing 2/0 Cable Crimp



2/0 Cable Terminal Crimp Completed

 

Another good option for terminating battery cables, without an appropriate crimp tool is to use the NAPA compression battery terminals.

For 2/0 here is a battery terminal. They also have a 2/0 right-angle flag terminal. (That is a very cool terminal, permitting the feed from either side.) They also have a 2/0 lug It doesn't list the size, but it looks like 3/8" to me.

They have these terminals for the other battery cable gauges.