On my "smaller" boat I use for Columbia River fun - salmon, steelhead, carp, capr, etc... I have been running a dual-battery system as is customary on most boats: deep cycle for the electronics, starter battery for the main engine. Always made sense to me as I didn't want to risk running my main battery down with the electronics. But for the second year in a row, I had my deep cycle battery short out on me after having trouble charging while the motor ran.
My set up was to have the motor hooked up to the battery cutoff/selector switch on one circuit, then my electrical panel on the other circuit connected to the deep cycle. The main starter battery then connected to an ACR (charging relay) that would send charge to the deep cycle when the motor ran.
For whatever reason, I just could never get the deep cycle to reliably charge. I even swapped out the ACR unit last year thinking that was the problem, but late last year, kept running into the same issues. Then this spring when getting the boat ready, my deep cycle is shorted out and dead the same way it was last year.
More I thought about it, the less having a dedicated battery made sense to me. I'm really not running that much off of it on this little boat, especially since my Livescope system has become my primary fish finder and I have it running on a portable lithium battery setup I move between boats. So finally took both batteries out and replaced with a nice AGM dual purpose. But I am loving the simplicity so far. Much less stress about things charging, and zero drama with the wiring.
Weirdly enough, on my bigger ocean boat I run the same dual battery setup with same ACR, and have had exactly zero issues. So maybe my Suzuki 200hp is better at charging than my 60hp Suzuki? No idea. But I'm happy with the change. And zero chance I do that on the bigger boat methinks... Probably not wise to go offshore without backup power.
Not even sure what my mission was with creating this post, but I'm sure others have had similar experiences... or perhaps some want to share why going to one battery is a fools errand
It just started its season this weekend anchored up fishing for springers. It'll get after the carp and capr here shortly.
My set up was to have the motor hooked up to the battery cutoff/selector switch on one circuit, then my electrical panel on the other circuit connected to the deep cycle. The main starter battery then connected to an ACR (charging relay) that would send charge to the deep cycle when the motor ran.
For whatever reason, I just could never get the deep cycle to reliably charge. I even swapped out the ACR unit last year thinking that was the problem, but late last year, kept running into the same issues. Then this spring when getting the boat ready, my deep cycle is shorted out and dead the same way it was last year.
More I thought about it, the less having a dedicated battery made sense to me. I'm really not running that much off of it on this little boat, especially since my Livescope system has become my primary fish finder and I have it running on a portable lithium battery setup I move between boats. So finally took both batteries out and replaced with a nice AGM dual purpose. But I am loving the simplicity so far. Much less stress about things charging, and zero drama with the wiring.
Weirdly enough, on my bigger ocean boat I run the same dual battery setup with same ACR, and have had exactly zero issues. So maybe my Suzuki 200hp is better at charging than my 60hp Suzuki? No idea. But I'm happy with the change. And zero chance I do that on the bigger boat methinks... Probably not wise to go offshore without backup power.
Not even sure what my mission was with creating this post, but I'm sure others have had similar experiences... or perhaps some want to share why going to one battery is a fools errand
It just started its season this weekend anchored up fishing for springers. It'll get after the carp and capr here shortly.
