Since we started spending more time at anchor and less time
riding the dock we came to realize that our battery bank just wasn't going to
cut it. When we purchased the boat it
came with a house bank of two 8D batteries that were seriously cashed. We chose to replace them with four 6V golf
cart batteries with the same capacity. That was five years ago
and they served us well over the years.
A couple of nights before our anchor out Memorial weekend we
lost power on the dock. Since I don’t
sleep much I was awake when it died at 3 am.
I went back to sleep and figured we’d deal with it when we got up. By 5 I was wide awake and we were completely
dead. Not even two hours on the house
bank. Well crap.
Of course we had been dealing with the generator sage, so
this was exactly what we didn't need.
Add another obstacle to getting to anchor out. Saturday morning, before digging back into
the generator, we ran to Sam’s Club. Now
I know every boater has an opinion on the best batteries for a cruising
boat. Some love the gel, others the AGM,
don’t forget the Optima’s. We had built
our battery box which is conveniently located 18" under the floor, to fit six Trojan golf cart batteries and lets face it we’re
cheap. Sam’s had an Energizer equivalent
to the Trojan T105 for $85 per battery so we purchased enough to fill the box.
Since we were trading in our four old batteries we only had to pay the core charge on
two of the six. Bingo, bango, ouch my
back and we were in business. Our
fabulous new battery bank gives us roughly 700 Ah of power. This should be all of the power that we need
once we leave the dock for the big blue.
Now if we can only fashion a way to charge them when we aren’t on shore
power. Solar panels, a working generator,
an alternator for the Yanmar how I can’t wait until you are mine!
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