Adding the RADAR arch

Third Wave came to us with the flybridge cowl riddled with holes.  There were mounts for lights and horns and the GPS antenna.  The VHF antenna was mounted on the lower deck with a fiberglass extension pole which was peeling off glass fibers.  The purpose of the RADAR arch was to clean up and remove this mish mash suburban sprawl of bolt ons from the cowl thus allowing it to look better and not leak anymore once the holes were plugged.  In addition, the arch would add cockpit spreader lights and it would serve as the base for our vehicle PTZ camera which is like having an 18x fixed mounted binocular which can be aimed and zoomed any way you want to.


I had the aluminum arch left over from my prior boat, a 38' commander.  Fortunately, the custom arch was an exact fit for Third Wave as we hoped it would be.  So we took the arch down to the Line-X truck bed liner jobber and paid him $600 to prep and coat the arch with a crème colored version of Line-X.  Unlike painted arches, this will last forever.  I've had Line-X in my truck bed since 2003 and it still looks very good.





The finished result is a little bumpy, but it put a nice even finish on top of the old aluminum whose shiny original finish was spotted all over with white aluminum oxide pits.  So spraying this with shiny paint was not going to work anyway.





Once we knew the arch was going to work for us, we took it home from the boat and added the lights, the cameras, the antenna mounts and of course all the concealed wiring.  In order to fish the wires in the tube we tied fishing line to a ping pong sized ball of tape and used a shop vac to suck the ball through the tubes.





A close up of a spreader light and a wakeboard style 6x9 in a marine aluminum enclosure:





The wires come out of one of the forward tubes which in turn attaches to the side of the flybridge cowl for a seamless wiring job.





Below you can see a fixed angle 4k IP camera with electronic zoom.  Unlike the PTZ which can point anywhere, this is always aiming at the back deck in order to be able to follow the action back there. This camera is also part of the security apparatus.