could a po have started with a black/white pos/neg system and only changed the white wire (incorrectly) to red? some boats have been wired that way blk=pos , wht = neg .
electricians show those types of changes with the correct color tape on the last few inches of each end of a single line to prevent mix-ups. My v20 came to me with a bunch of that orange wire also. It took a while to trace all.

red is hot, and should be on the left side, at the bottom in that picture. all the other screws on the left side, other than the "hot in" at the bottom, only purpose is to connect the fuses to the "hot bar" and energize them, no wires should be attached to those screws. the middle run of screws, just to the right of the fuses, are the energized connections coming out of the fuses and all "positive out" leads should be connected there. they are not even used in the picture! the bottom screw on the right, where the po has connected the "positive in" power supply wire is actually the negative grounding buss and is meant to connect all ground wires.

the result of the way this thing is wired is the same as if all the hot wires were just twisted together and if all the negative wires were just twisted together and there wasnt a fuse box at all. everything hooked up to it will turn on but WILL NOT BE FUSE PROTECTED. so if there is a short somewhere instead of a fuse blowing and shutting off the power to the short, the shorted wire will remain energized, get very hot, possibly start sparking, probably do a lot of damage and might even make you jump out of your boat so you can tread water and watch it burn!

Could anyone put up a picture with the same fuse block that's correctly wired? I would like to see it cause now I'm not 100 percent sure I'm right the way I'm hooked up to it

Something so friggin simple is giving me a headache Lol

Don't over think it.... Follow the flow... From batt+ to power distribution strip on one side of fuses, through a fuse, to positive terminal on other side of fuse, from there it goes to a switch on the dash, out of switch to say a bilge pump, back up the the ground bus on the side of the fuse block and back to batt-.....

It's simple as can be as long as you visualize it as a path instead of a bunch of random wires.

EDIT: to be clear I am NOT saying it is wired right... I'm addressing the request for a pic of one wired right...

is it possible that the po just used that as a bus bar and the circiuts are fused at the switch panel??...otherwise it is just wrong....

its just wrong, no fuses at switch panel. i texted him a pic and tried to explain to him, not to be a di ck but because i know he is putting another boat together and he needs it to be safe. he says his stuff is right cause everything worked and when i tried to explain again he said i was wrong cause his gps quit working and he had to change a fuse to make it work again!

alrighty then... as much as i hate all the extra work i think im gonna go through EVERY wire and completely rewire this boat. putting this rig together to take my little boy fishing and i aint gonna find out the hard way! po rewired the whole boat and so will i.

That's ugly!

Couldn't find a pic..

For those of you not envisioning this, it's easier if you just mentally separate the ground buss (black wires on top) and the fuse panel because they are not connected in any way, I prefer to install separate ones if I can, makes the mess a little less.

Then just look at what's left, a bar connecting all the circuits and then some fuses that are not in the circuit at all.

If you are not sure if yours is done correctly a simple test would be to turn everything on, then pull out one fuse at a time & make sure the matching device turns off.

Electrical fires on a boat scare the sh!t out of me guys, I've had an experience or two. :-0

I think mine is right but I'm going yo do that test pull out a fuse But let's make it understandable for us all
There's 3 vertical lines of screws One on the right One on the lef and on line in the middle
What are the middle ones for .?

i still see the pic in the original post but here it is again