The only large iron in town in a soldering gun, went down to the Radio Shack and got one but the tip is way too large to wield in the space available and it only runs about 15 seconds before the GFI trips. Don't know why, large inductive load ungrounded? Plus, board and terminals dirty from having fried themselves. But I did jury rig something: parted strands of #10 wire running some through each thru-hole. Soldered that, connected up again. It's only going to be 36 tonight so the need was really just to measure the max current of the heater to see if I exceeded specs (no), confirm my diagnosis (yes), and determine what replacement to order ( 20+ amps output). I actually have two more of these units on board, one for the other 12V electronics, one to charge the engine battery. I needed to know whether to be suspicious of them, given the construction. My jury rig is working fine, but isn't exactly "safe".

The bonding work I am doing is inside the boom, adding the fittings for the 3rd reef. I'm very familiar with heating epoxy with cheap halogen work lights from Home Depot. I got a small one (250W) and by disassembling most of it was able to get it into the space required. But it is in contact with a bunch of carbon laminate and the case gets quite hot as I'm sure you know. So back to Lowes to get a 100W bulb. Now the case temp *might* be acceptable, but - even at a balmy 42 degrees here on the water - the 15 knot breeze makes it impossible to heat the surfaces required. A few inches from the lamp, too hot, a few inches further, stone cold. But I could take my little ceramic disk heater purchased in Canada years ago (which has been keeping the boat from freezing the last couple of weeks), hang it from the mast, tape it in place, cover everything with cardboard blowing warm air down the boom, and keep thing about 100 degrees. There are a couple of things 6 inches inside the boom you can't see.