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hi everyone jeff cote here

with boatingtechtalk.com so we've got a

question from a fellow boater

and this question is something that is

pertinent to all of us

especially if you have a second battery

on board so some of us have boats with

just

one engine battery and only one battery

that's different

um and the question is well what happens

right

when your existing battery is

maybe not sufficient or not the right

properly charged to start your engine

what do you do right

now in this specific instance robin says

oh you know i've got an engine battery

and what do you think about using those

sort of portable little batteries

emergency starter kits that

you know you see advertise for cars

should i have one well first of all if

you have two batteries on your boat

you should definitely have the ability

to either have your batteries go in

parallel and you would do that through a

source selector switch you know going

from

one both two off so

the words are going to be different on

different battery switches some of the

battery switches are going to call it

both some are going to call it

all so that you can combine your

batteries to have more batteries to

start the engine

so that's one thing the other thing too

is a source selector switch is even a

little bit better than paralleling

because you can say you know what

battery one isn't too good let me start

on battery two and once i've started on

battery two

i'm gonna go to all and then battery two

is also whatever is running the engine

once you go to all now your alternator

is outputting

and charging not just two but it's also

charging one so that's

something to consider right a source

selector switch is always better than

combining

now failing that if you have a boat that

has only one

engine a battery and that's it there's

no other batteries on board

having a little portable battery pack

for boosting the battery whenever it's

weak now remember

i tell people this all the time if

you're worried about your battery not

starting

your boat and sometimes it's sort of not

enough

tell tale sign right away that you have

a problem you know the best place to

resolve a problem is at the dock

always once you leave the dock you might

stop running your engine

in the in the water somewhere either at

a destination on the water

at an anchorage and then when you go

start again you're going to have a

problem and resolving that problem at

the dock is way

easier than doing so in the middle of

nowhere so

if you're really really worried about

your whatever your starting circuit

either be the battery or the cabling

then address that at the dock first

but if it's everything's fine and you're

saying well i like

the added benefit of not having to worry

then yeah and i've

actually done that too um these little

portable packs are not that big you know

they're

tiny little batteries and they're going

to give maybe a little bit more oomph to

help start the engine

the question was also a sub question to

the question was well would it hurt the

batteries and no

because you're just doing it for a

shorter period of time the voltage is

too low

actually what you're worried about is

actually damaging the starter

on your engine so no harm there

and i carry one and i just even it's

funny at easter actually just recently i

ended up actually recharging the battery

pack to have it fully charged

just in case something terrible happens

on the water so robin great question

but remember remember always ask

yourself

what happens if i can't start my engine

because i have a weak battery

do i have the ability on my boat to put

batteries in parallel

to use a source selector and if the

answer to both of those questions is no

then yeah i think it makes sense to have

a portable little battery pack

to help in the case that you do have a

problem on the water so great question

thanks for asking thank you for watching

this

pys video if you've got further

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again for watching