1st weekend on the hook questions

[ShamuToo]

The lights are not a big deal as long as you don't run them contiuously. For an anchor light I use a AA powered lifejacket strobe they are made with an antenna clip and it goes on my VHF antenna. It has the added side benefit of not attracting bugs all night.

My secret for the fridge is to freeze a slew of those blue ice packs or the plastic freeze packs and stuff the freezer portion of the fridge full of them. I can turn the fridge off all night (or all weekend) and everything stays nice and cold. Pack your beer and water in a cooler with ice so you don't have to constantly open the fridge for another cold one.

 

[Alex F]

While away from the boat and connected to shore power with the A/C charge switch on the on position in the cabin switch panel, do you get a better charge to the batterys with the 2 main battery switches off?????...
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The charger should keep the batteries charged regardless if the swithces are ON or OFF. If you leave the switches ON the usage of batteries power still remains minimal, so this is not an issue from charging point of view. I keep my switches OFF for the following reasons:

1. To minimize the use of any equipment that don't have dedicated switches (although many might be controlled from the panel breakers, but I keep what I need ON most of the time).

2. The most important, is the occasional power outages. So, let's say due to nasty weather your marina looses AC power. If you have switches ON and all breakers on the usage of 12V DC power is encreesed and the batteries will loose the charge quicker. So, if you are unable to get to the boat for a week or two when you arrive you'll have "a dead boat". This very much could result in need to replace all 4 batteries. May be they'll work for a while but as far as I know the biggest "killer" for the batteries is when they're totally drained. This will shorten their life.

Hope this helps.

 

[billnpat]

Thanks.....mine are off as of today:thumbsup::thumbsup: