Jere Lull wrote:

Personally, I don't fuse to the load, but to the wire, being conservative.

Actually, fusing to the load is conservative if it's a smaller fuse than the
wire. I'd do this differently on a new installation but there is a lot of
wiring in the boat I haven't seen yet and I've pulled out some weird
modifications by the PO (like running the big auto pilot motor on 22 ga.
Radio Shack solid core wire without a fuse!).

A good fuse panel is hardly a failure point (unlike the one I first put in).
I'd call having the breakers sized to the wire and the fuses sized to the
load "redundancy". Besides, a fuse panel is a fraction the cost re-doing
the panel and breakers. The breakers do work so I can jumper a fuse in the
unlikely event that I run out without major risk. I just don't want to
trust the old breakers and wiring exclusively.

--
Roger Long