Pontoon Boats, Wiring and Muskrats

​If you’ve had a pontoon boat on Lake Fenton for a couple of years, either you – or someone you know – has had a muskrat destroy the wiring under the pontoons. This mostly happens in the fall when young muskrats leave their parent’s nest and start one on their own. To a young muskrat, a nest of branches and leaves in the well between the pontoons is just as good as a nest in the banks of the lake where they normally live.

The problem isn’t the mess, but the fact that muskrats will chew on your wiring harness until the wires short. Your first clue might be that your lights won’t turn on. Soon your battery won’t hold a charge, or you can’t start your engine.

It turns out muskrats eat wiring because many years ago rubber manufacturers started using vegetable oil as a base for rubber instead of petroleum. The young muskrats smell the rubber and assume the wiring harness is lunch.

After repairing muskrat damage for the second time on my pontoon’s wiring harness, I decided that before I put the boat in this spring, I’d take it to the marina and get it fixed. They had a couple of solutions.

• Depending on the shape of the well in front of the motor and how the wiring is routed through the boat, you can fix the problem by enclosing the well at the back of the boat in wire mesh.
• If the wiring harness is exposed, it can enclose it with heavy plastic tubing that snaps over the harness from the motor all the way up to the cockpit.

Because my harness was exposed, I went with the tubing.

With my wiring protected, I’m ready for the muskrats this fall.  Sorry in advance if they ignore my boat and nest in yours instead. If your boat doesn’t start one morning, at least you’ll know why.

Image by Courtney Celley/USFWS, Public Domain, https://www.fws.gov/media/muskrat-eating