Compac did not adhere to the ABYC conventions for wire color. They also did not adhere to their own documentation which claims that DC negative is white (they used black).
ABYC does not specify colors for anchor and bow lights and Ancor offers only a limited number of wire colors. As a result, white was picked for the bow light and purple had to be reused for the anchor light. Later these two may be switched to match the mast wiring coloring better.
| Wiring Conventions | ||||
| Use | Compac | ABYC | Remote Access |
Mast |
| Pos | Red | Red | Red | --- |
| Neg | White | Yellow | Yellow | Black Green |
| Grnd | --- | Green | --- | --- |
| Nav | Green | Grey | Green -> Grey |
Blue |
| Bow | Blue | --- | White | Red |
| Cabin | Yellow | Blue | Blue | --- |
| Anchor | --- | --- | Purple | White |
| Pump | ??? | Brown | Brown | --- |
| Acc | ??? | Orange | Orange | --- |
| Instr | --- | Purple | Purple | --- |
| note: Blue = cabin or instrument light | ||||
Because there was a limited set of colors to pick from in the mast wiring, a 5 conductor 14 gauge wire, the mast wiring conventions differ from the rest of the boat. The point at which the wires are interconnected on a terminal block requires the table below mapping the colors used on the terminal block in the cabin to those used for the mast.
| Wiring Conventions | ||
| Use | Cabin wiring | Mast Wiring |
| Ground | Yellow | Black Green |
| Cabin Lighting | Blue | (unused) |
| Accesories | Orange | (vhf+) |
| Bow | White | Red |
| Anchor | Purple | White |
| Navigation | Grey | Blue |
Its a bit unfortunate that the mast red wire was used for the bow light rather than using the white wire. This would have at least made one wire in the mast match the cabin wire color. As mentioned above, swapping the colors for bow and anchor light within the cabin wiring might be easy and make the cabin and mast wiring colors match a little better.