Interestingly, when I took my boat out of the water last year (I had it in the water for 7 days at Town Creek Marina here in Beaufort), I noticed one of my batteries was not charging but wasn't sure if it was going dead. I wasn't sure why I no longer had my starboard-side battery on-line. Well, I put the boat up for the winter in the new garage I built last summer.
Last night I was charging the batteries getting ready for this year. I have two batteries and a cut off swith: Battery 1, Battery 2, BOTH, and OFF. Battery 1 was dead (starboard). Battery 2 was fine (port). On my batteries, I have "in-line" fuses, as well as each battery has a pop-up reset circuit breaker near each battery. There are two red wires running to each battery and attached to the positive terminal on each battery. These wires run into my Guest 5/5/10 Charger. On Battery 1, I removed each of the (two) in-line fuses (they are contained in-line in the cable itself and are enclosed in black hard rubber containers). I think one was a 25 amp fuse (brown), and it was fine - it had significant corrosion deposits on it, but the fuse was fine, I cleaned off the terminals of the fuse and replaced it. The other red cable with the in-line fuse had a 5 amp (orange) fuse. I removed it and the fuse is blown.
My Guest Charger 2621A-OEM 5,5,10 Amps battery charger displayed GREEN. However, the helm station panel demonstrated no amperage at all in Battery 1. Therefore, I'm concluding I have an "open" circuit and the Guest Battery Charger is incapable of either charging the battery with the blown fuse or creating a closed circuit so I can use the battery.
Prior to getting out the meter to see if the battery was actually dead, I grabbed some new fuses and replaced the 5 amp in-line fuse (leading into the Guest Charger). This resolved the issue - closed the circuit, the amperage (reading 11.5) returned to the helm amperage panel, and the battery is charging fine - issue resolved. Cheers, Norm
