Another Saturday Night and I

am going to bed pretty soon.
I have a motorboat. My motorboat is 14.5 feet long
It has a W bottom. It seats 5 but only 3 comfortably.  i've been out of work with kidneystone troubles all week in fackt Friday they Lithotripsied me. So Im home. I rolled the motorboat out into the driveway. (Its in the garage on a boat trailer and it rolls very easily)
I bought this boat 4 years ago. I paid 50 dollars for it and the trailer. The trailer had a flat.  the boat had a hole in the hull and the deck was rotten. I dragged it home and cleaned it up. I fixed the deck. I patched the hole and carpeted it and painted it and got it a 35  horsepower Johnson outboard motor to push it along. Motorboat motors new or used are about 100.00 per one horsepower. but I got my 35 horsepower Johnson for 1000.00. its a Johnson Seahorse.  I had to reinforce the transom with steel plates. (which was no prob i work for a steel mill/pipe making facility) I probably have about 1500.00 bucks wrapped up in this baby jes nah.
Last year the igniton switch went out. And the lower unit (where the propeller is) leaked gear grease like niagra falls. So I put her up and aint done nothing with her till today. I went to farm and fleet (hillbilly farmer department store/feed store/tractor store/clothier. I got a new ignition switch, and a toggle switch cause I've never wired up the lights. I did all that today. lolling around in the sun. On my back in the sunny driveway. I rewired the new ignition switch completely new from the battery to the outboard and then to the dash. I figgered them old crusty wires were half the problem. I had a couple spools of wire from other tasks in my garage so I used em up. I must have wired the lights wrong however cause they dont work. But I ran  over what I did today in my mind and I think I know where I went wrong. Ya see.... each light (the back one is on a pole about 18 inches high and the front one is on the bow its in a chrome case) has TWO wires on it. One for power and one for neutral. The toggle switch has a post for power and then one accessory on the right and one on the left. Well, I want BOTH sets of lights to light up when I throw the switch. so I wired the neutrals on the side I wasnt using. and the powers together on the side I was switching to. Nuttn happens that way. Well darkness happens. The boat cranks right over when I hit the start switch. but I didnt have a post for the electric choke (I usually use the manual one anyway) and a black wire that blew a main fuse where ever I tried to attach it. Its not hot. (I have sixty meters to tell amperage, wattage, voltage, ohms, etc... I dont know what any of that means but I do know if a line is hot or not.) It could be a ground but on the old switch it didnt say 'g'. and jes because its black dont mean shit.
Anyway tomorrow Im gonna pull the lower unit and see if I can stop the gear grease leak. I went to a former dealer in my neighborhood this moanin. He's a nice guy in his early forties. and he sells me parts that are in his warehouse for cost.  His dad used to fix Johnsons and died a while back and he shut the place down. BUT he's got all the stuff I need to fix my motor in stock cause there aint many do it yer selfer motorboat fixers in my neck of the woods. In fact THATS the exact reason I fix my own stuff. The people you have to deal with are total Assholes. They take forever, charge unrealistic shop rates and mark stuff up 160 % and well... theyre rarely polite, and usually drunk. So I'll do a lil wrenchin tomorrow if my back will allow. Its really not hard to get to and I  got all day..............
Bowe