re: Help me understand boat batteries.

One battery. Topped off overnight. Maybe 2 nights if it was a realllllly long windy day on the water, but anytime I leave it on over 24 hrs it's because I forgot.

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How long does it take to charge your batteries? 3 months?

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I'll give y'all the lowdown on batteries.
Wet cell batteries will sulphate when no activity is present in the battery.
A battery tender(trickle charger) will keep the electrolytes in the battery active and eliminate the sulphation of the battery cells.

AGM(Augmented glass mat) batteries are basically the same as regular wet cell batteries but have much better shock resistance and sulphation is less.

I use battery shocks on all 3 of my batteries.


Trailering your boat is the hardest on battery cells and will break the cells if the battery gets old.
These little things help isolate the battery from shock and vibration.

Deep cell batteries need a quick charge when you get home then need a trickle charge to keep the cells active while the battery sits or else sulphation will occur.

I've never thought of that as trickle charging.

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Trickle charging, means charging a fully charged battery under no-load at a rate equal to its self-discharge rate, thus enabling the battery to remain at its fully charged level

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One starting battery and one house battery. The house is used for GPS depth finder lights radio etc.

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That would bring my total to 4. No idea where I would put another battery.

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I've never thought of that as trickle charging.

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No I've never done that then. I don't think we even have any kind of charger around capable of it

I fished a club that did 12 hr tourneys for 4 years. Never had an issue running 3 batteries. Dont see the point in the added expense of the 4th.

Somebody's ballin'

Man you guys know your stuff. So here's my situation.

I had a thread last week about a boat that I'm possibly buying. Well it looks like I won't be buying it, but will be able to use it whenever I want. It's my paw-in-laws and he never uses it. He said if I'd feel better about owning the boat, I could buy it, or I can just use it whenever. I said, ok, I'll just use it whenever.

I used the fact that he doesn't have a trolling motor on it as a way to say, hey I'll put some money into it, instead of buying it and when you want to sell it, you'll have some upgrades. Anyway...

I'm not sure when I'll get a trolling motor, I'll have to cut the bow rail, and not sure if he'd be cool with that. Right now it has one battery and on the side of the center console it has a shut off switch for it. I'm not sure when I'd use that other than long term storage or something.

The boat has head lights and lights in the inside so you can see the deck at night, I think 7 lights; radio, GPS Sonar unit and that's about it. No live well...yet. So we're looking at one battery for the engine, and accessories above. I've been thinking about taking it out and anchoring around the mouth of the Tchefuncte at night and catching some sharks, the lights would be great for that. I suppose I don't need to have them on constantly, only if we hook something, but it'd be cool to hang out relax with the lights and radio on. But again, I know I'm not 50 miles offshore and it's not that big of a deal, more the hassle of it, if I can avoid that. So taking the trolling motor out of the equation, because if I decide to get one, i'll get a battery dedicated for it, I'm just trying to gauge this scenario. Everything's hooked up to this one battery, so I'm not sure I'd even be able to pull off the radio, GPS, etc to put on the other battery.

As far as chargers, I'll just pick up one of those smart chargers for now, seems like that should be ok...

Thanks again.