First time for everything...accidentally drained my batteries
 

After owning boats for 26 years the other day I discovered I accidentally drained my 3 batteries. My boat has 2 stereo, 1 starting battery and I had the Perko set to 1+2 (all). Pulled my boat out of the water 2 weeks ago after a day on lake and proceeded to wipe her down while listening to the stereo. Put the boat up at my storage unit and came back to her the other day just to turn on the timer for my on-board charger and discovered I forgot to turn the key off and did not turn the Perko off. Needless to say I was disappointed in myself. So, basically the batteries drained and have been drained for about 10-11 days. My on-board charger is more robust than the average charger, I chose to go with the ProMariner Pro-Nautic 50 amp for my two Interstate SRM-29 stereo bank and one Interstate starting battery. The batteries are 7-8 months old so I let them charge 24hrs or until the charger did it's own thing with charging. Took the boat to the ramp today, fired right up and voltage on dash said 14.4 volts. Took it back to storage, plugged the onboard charger again on timer and charger display showed 14.6 volts and it went into "maintain" instead of "active charging". I hope I'm good to go. Any opinions from the battery gurus? Thanks.

I did a similar thing about halfway through the summer, both my batteries came back and never had an issue.

I left the key on once which runs the hour meter...it takes about 160 hours to drain 1 starting battery:D

It's tough getting old, isn't it? That kind of stuff happens to me all the time.

There is probably some reduced capacity as a result of sitting for that many days discharged. In essence they have aged some.
The reaction in a lead acid battery is basically a slow function in a permanent reaction. You can get away with it for up to a month but that would be pushing the ability to get any charge back in to it. I would not worry too much if it is on an automatic maintainer but I would expect them to last fewer years. Just watch them when you've been away for a few months and start using them again.

Kind of a b*tch trying to tell people that are looking to buy your boat that 90% of those 1500 hours are from leaving the key on in storage. :)

Well, in my case the key was turned back to accessory...only 59hrs

I guess that's a great reason to have the stereo wired to a master switch so that it's not powered by the ignition circuit. I can run my stereo regardless of what position my key is in. Seems pretty logical. I would be pissed if I added a bunch of hours to my boat for nothing.

I've had stereo switches before and the only benefit I see with it is not interrupting your music when shutting the boat down and turning the key back to accessory or going from accessory and starting the boat. Either way you still need to remember to turn your key off (in my case when I just pulled my phone off the USB) or you need to remember to turn off the stereo master switch. Plus I always turn off the Perko but in this one time in 26yrs I forgot.

Yeah, I get that. For me, the key is turned off before I pull the boat out of the water. The stereo stays playing during wipedown and the lighted switch tends to be a good visual.

I think you've got a good track record. and your chargers did their job. :cool:

its so easy to disconnect an hour meter that they should never be trusted...condition condition condition

they should get you through a few seasons. that sucks though, batts are $$$