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0:00
When it comes to the electrical system on a boat, without a good battery, you are really going to be quite literally dead in the water
0:07
Which is why when we begin to cover the most common electrical issues you come across on a boat, it's no wonder we are starting with the most common one being a dead battery
0:17
Don't worry the rest of the issues, though they are also pretty common, they aren't the things that a lot of people will look at first thing, but we'll cover those all in this video
0:26
Now you would be surprised to how many times a low or dead battery can
0:29
lead people off onto a rabbit chase looking for an issue when all along it was just a battery
0:35
Which is why this is the most common issue in two situations
0:39
The first situation, regardless of what type of battery you have, is that a key switch
0:44
or a component gets left on in the boat or even after a heavy rain that causes the float
0:49
switch to activate the bilge pump enough to drain the battery down, and we try and just
0:53
hit the battery with a quick charge to try and bring it up. But unfortunately, this is not the way a battery works
0:59
And if the battery was completely drained, then it could take a day or two on a 2 amp trickle charger to bring the battery back up to operating condition
1:08
So it isn't that the battery is bad, but it won't be usable for a while
1:13
And if you want to get out on the water immediately, then you've got to replace a battery that isn't really bad
1:22
Then the second thing is more specific to the type of battery you have
1:26
Being whether or not you have a maintenance or a maintenance-free battery. You see, flooded wet cell batteries are the most common batteries in boats these days
1:34
but they are a maintenance battery, and they require distilled water to occasionally be put in them
1:40
So a battery that is low on water won't take a charge properly, and it won't give you the juice that you need to run the stuff on your boat that you want to
1:48
possibly even to the point of being dead on the water Moving on from the battery though without getting too technical the next electrical issue that you can commonly come across is a bad or a broken wire There are many
2:01
reasons why you can come across this issue, but usually it has to do with a portion of the wire
2:06
getting a cut in the protective sheathing and allowing water to get into the wire and start to
2:11
corrode and damage the wire which keeps it from allowing the right amount of amperage to flow through
2:17
the wire. We won't cover the electrical aspects of amperage and voltage and resistance here today
2:23
but interestingly enough, we will let everyone know that we are just releasing a brand new
2:28
Born Again Boating Academy section to the website that includes over 80 brand new member exclusive
2:34
item-specific how-to videos that are arranged to be super easy to navigate through. These cover
2:41
the entire electrical system that is on a boat from the batteries to the components, as well as pretty
2:46
much everything else that is on the boat. Now we are going to limit the number of members to
2:51
the course here in the beginning, so if you would like to be a part of the academy from the
2:55
beginning, make sure and sign up today while we still have the access open. We have also just
3:01
created a completely free discourse community where we hope to continue the conversation of
3:06
your boating issues. Seeing that we receive hundreds of emails every month, we can't respond to all
3:11
of them. But with the community, it will allow others to step in and help answer the questions that
3:16
you and someone else might have. The sign up for the free community will stay open where on the
3:21
academy side we are limiting the access. But with that being said, let's move back to
3:26
discussing the electrical issues by talking about the connections. There are three extremely
3:31
connection related issues that we come across all the time when working with an electrical
3:35
issue on the boat. The first one is a pretty blatant issue because this is quite simply just a
3:41
loose connection This happens more often than you might think and can happen at all kinds of kinds of different locations Usually you will find these at two or more common locations though if we are talking about the entire boat with one of them being at the actual battery Commonly when wing nuts are used or there are just 46 and a half terminals smashed onto the
4:00
battery or they just weren't tightened down to the begin with, then the other location is on the
4:05
back of the battery switch. A loose connection won't allow the amperage or the power to get to the
4:10
things that you are trying to run on the boat. Then if we aren't talking about a loose connection
4:14
though, we are usually talking about a corroded connection. The amount of water time that a boat sees has a direct correlation to this
4:22
Commonly, in hotter climates with year-long boating seasons, the boat is always in a humid
4:27
and wet environment, which will take its toll on the connections of the electrical components
4:32
on your boat. If you live in a freshwater location where the boat is only seeing maybe 20 to 30 hours
4:37
of water time over a three-month boating season, then this is less prevalent to you and a reason
4:43
why you will oftentimes find a lot more of connections where someone has used the electrical
4:48
connectors that are used for the home solid copper wire electrical connections
4:53
And you can even see them coating the electrical connections with an adhesive or a sealant
4:57
Whereas a boat with a lot more water time and in a much more humid climate, this is a definite no-go
5:04
Because these locations will corrode very quickly and fail, you will find all kinds of corrosive
5:09
buildup and other issues that make the connection fail. A quick side note here is going to also be that you want the least number of connections
5:16
in a circuit as possible. You don't want to find, say, a bilge pump that has six butt connectors on the wire going
5:22
to the pump. That's six places where you could lose the power or ground going to your pumps
5:28
The same goes for a battery cable or a wire or any other cable or wiring that you have
5:32
on the boat. Because in the situation with the bilge pump, when the pump doesn't work and the boat fills
5:37
up with water that is never a situation that you want to find yourself in Unless that is you are watching one of our other videos covering that kind of a topic But this will get us to our last common electrical issue being a dirty connection You might be asking yourself isn that the same thing as a corroded connection
5:55
Well, sort of, but not really. Because there is an interesting phenomenon that happens in the
6:00
boating world where a connection, extremely common on batteries and battery cables, where you look
6:06
at a connection and it's tight, it's not corroded, and it looks like it's got nothing wrong
6:10
with it. But when we get into it further, there is actually a film or a coating that has
6:15
developed on the connector in the post where it is connected to. This gray coating can actually
6:21
prevent the connection of the cable to whatever it is being connected to and can cause you
6:26
all kinds of problems with the electricity delivery of your boat. This is why I usually
6:31
clean the connections with a little polisher like this. That has a rough grit sanding pad on
6:36
it that will clean the cable up really quickly. And then when putting it together, just covering it with some liquid electrical tape, depending on the location
6:49
or some battery post terminal spray that also works pretty well to prevent this issue
7:00
I'm not really sure what this coating is, why it develops, or even how it develops
7:05
All I know is that it does happen, and it happens quite often down here in south
7:10
Florida and can cause you all kinds of issues on your boat. Now let us know what kind of
7:15
electrical issues you've had to deal with on your boat. Batteries, dirty, corroded, or loose
7:21
connections, a broken wire perhaps? Let us know in the comments section below. Don't forget to
7:26
visit us at born againboating.com and sign up for the academy or the free community. And if you
7:32
are new here, make sure you're subscribed to the channel. Thank you all for hanging out with us today
7:36
and we look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you
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