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hi everyone jeff cote here with pacific  yacht systems and we're doing another  installment of  ask pys so we've got a question from a  fellow voter ron  ron asks what battery should be used for  thrusters  a cranking battery or a deep cycle  battery and how  charging should be set up the research  i've done  leans towards a deep cycle battery but  it's interesting the different opinions  and reasoning  thanks wrong okay first first things  first  it's a boat there's going to be  conflicting opinions  and ron's right you got to do your  research everybody has an opinion and  you gotta  it's not so much the opinion that's  important it's the reasoning behind it  right and it's always a question of  tradeoffs  so when we do thrusters we generally  in most applications are gonna recommend  a cranking battery  my reasoning is as follows a thruster is  a load that is of short duration right  it's going to be 10 seconds  5 seconds 2 seconds 30 seconds if you're  really going  bezonkers and that load is going to be a  crazy amount of amperage right could be  200  300 400 amps even higher  and that's going to be really hard on a  deep cycle battery because remember deep  cycle battery is a marathon runner  it's a battery that discharges over a  very long period of time  yet a cramping battery is sort of like a  sprinter a sprinter runs for a short  period of time  but it has the ability to have explosive  power so your thruster is really  similar to a starter it's a very high  load for a short period of time  so we always recommend a cranking  battery  if you're going to go with flooded with  for thrusters or even a windlass  because they just made for that purpose  and we would not recommend a deep cycle  battery  on a thruster the other reason too is  that you're going to notice that the  voltage on a deep cycle battery under  really really high loads  is going to drop down faster than a  cranking battery so a cranking battery  is actually going to be better for the  thruster tube  how do you recharge them i've seen many  instances where uh thruster batteries  are only recharged from a shore power or  a generator  via a battery charger which is okay but  not great because that means that while  you're underway or you're using your  engines the battery's not getting a  charge  so if you leave the dock you use your  thrusters a lot by time you get to your  other destination the batteries have not  been charged  and now you're using your batteries for  your thruster and they're already weak  and we know what a weak battery does on  an electric motor it causes electric  motors to fail because you've got a  lower voltage  so i'm a big proponent of having the  alternators or alternator also recharge  the thruster battery while you're  underway while the engines are running  it's a way to make sure that when you  get to your destination and the dock  the batteries are completely full so  that was a great question by ron  thanks for watching this video if you've  got further questions that we didn't  answer please ask them below or go on  our website  and fill up one of the forms and lastly if you  haven't subscribed to  our channel please do so that way you'll  get the regular contents  and in closing thanks for watching