No Shore Power - Need battery advice

[GiddYupJoe]

Hey y'all. I will be at Norris Lake for a week and wet slipping the boat. The dock is a couple hundred feet below the house and will not have shore power.

I have a group 34AGM Deep Cycle start battery and a Group 31AGM Deep Cycle for the house. I always have them on a tender in-between uses but will not have that option on this trip.

I can handle limiting the use of my stereo for the week but am worried that the OEM bilge pump that cycles will drain my start. From any of your experiences... if the bilge cycles all night and everything else is off, how long before I drain that battery?

It is a PIA to get to the dock and lugging the batteries up to the house to charge is not really an option... nor is buying a couple more batteries to switch them out.

It is too far to run any sort of extension cord down there too. Any advice or creative solutions are much appreciated!

(I have the standard factory DVSR dual battery switch)

 

[Mainah]

I would install a dedicated float bilge pump with its own discharge as that not only would solve for that week but is a good idea in general. This will allow you to leave the battery switches off.

 

[Scoop]

Look into one of these. They are very small and have different ratings. Great piece of mind. You can also use them as a portable power source and or for cars.

Scoop

https://www.costco.com/Cobra-Jumppack-Xl-Jump-Starter-Power-Pack.product.100412220.html

 

[Gym]

I have a larger version of what @Scoop mentioned. It lives in the boat during the summer and the truck during the rest of the year. I've used it about two dozen times. Always for other boaters or drivers but it gives me great peace of mind. Your other consideration is a small solar panel.

 

[BigAbe75]

Mine sat a little over a week recently while I had some trailer work done. I know bilge ran some as we had some serious rain that week. Every 2-3 days I went over to start and run about 10-15 minutes, but I don’t think it was necessary. Aside from that I wasn’t running at all during the day, but it was fine.

When I’d take off, I’d try to run bow up as much as possible until the bilge would cycle and pump out more water.

 

[Seadeals]

I have done about six full week vacations wet-slipped with no shore power and been fine with a group 24 battery just keeping the bilge on. It does not use that much and you are usually running a lot during the day charging back. I now have dual 29s and have no worries at all as I keep one isolated. The second bilge pump is a good solution if you do that a lot; but you may not want to go to that trouble just for this trip. My bigger issue at a community dock was trying to keep other people from worrying why that red light on my dash was on all night and hoping they didn’t try to be a Good Samaritan to save my battery.

 

[Julian]

WIth a good battery and a back pressure bilge the battery will last 2.5 weeks in my experience. So one week is no issue...especially as I assume you will be out on the boat every day.

I would install a bilge alarm just for peace of mind so you'd know if there was water above the stock bilge pump.