Susan wrote in over this past weekend with some questions about this little beauty that she's building currently:   Basically Susan wants this to be an all electric boat, totally traditional look with better than space shuttle technology utilized. Its going to be a cold-molded design and is actually a bit heavy for its size @4660 lbs. Just under 20 ft. LOD plus the bowsprit. Just over 9" beam. The intended use parameters are critical for a concept like this. So, all near shore, basically to ...

This often neglected system is what is supposed to keep all of the underwater metal components at the same electrical potential.

Can a dirty battery create problems on my boat?   Dusty, dirty batteries can cause accelerated self discharge. The battery you see in the photo above is somewhat vulnerable to accelerated self-discharge if the dust and sawdust you can see on it's top surface gets moist. In a general sense today, new batteries are far less susceptible to self-discharge, especially via their case tops. This all has a lot to do with the case materials being made of smooth, plastic materials versus gooey tar ...

A colleague sent over some photos yesterday of a small fire that had occured at one of the electrical connections on a ELCI breaker device he had sold to a customer. The photo below shows the aftermath of the small fire and the melted plastic around the terminal. The terminal above got really hot! This whole thing all centers around something I've said here many times before: "The primary by-product of excessive electrical resistance is HEAT". In this case enough heat to start a fortunately ...