Shore Power away from the boat

[Wolfboy]

Hi Everyone,
We have a 2022 R-27. It has all the original equipment, and I haven't made any upgrades to the solar, batteries, inverters, or chargers. We have it in a powered slip and we use the boat most weekends but may skip one or 2 if the weather looks rough as the boat is 140 miles away from our house and that's a long way to drive just to sit at the dock. My usual routine when we leave the boat is to close the seacock, turn of the water, engine switch, keep the shore power switched on and turn off everything except the battery charger. I leave the house switched on to keep the refrigerators cool. Does anyone see a problem with this in terms of safety? It may be wiser to switch off shore power and house power, but then we would be moving the fridge/freezer contents for every trip. It's more convenient to leave the boat the way I do, but now I'm rethinking it. What do others do when leaving the boat for their Sunday night to Friday night routine?

 

[HookedUp]

I do similarly with my R-27 and don't see a problem. I do have AC power on to keep the Blueetti power station charged as it is powering a standalone freezer.

 

[Submariner]

We use our boat year round so I leave the two refrigerators running. We turn off the lights, chartplotter, etc... But the house switch, engine switch, all stay on when we're away from the boat.

 

[American Flyer]

Hi Everyone,
We have a 2022 R-27. It has all the original equipment, and I haven't made any upgrades to the solar, batteries, inverters, or chargers. We have it in a powered slip and we use the boat most weekends but may skip one or 2 if the weather looks rough as the boat is 140 miles away from our house and that's a long way to drive just to sit at the dock. My usual routine when we leave the boat is to close the seacock, turn of the water, engine switch, keep the shore power switched on and turn off everything except the battery charger. I leave the house switched on to keep the refrigerators cool. Does anyone see a problem with this in terms of safety? It may be wiser to switch off shore power and house power, but then we would be moving the fridge/freezer contents for every trip. It's more convenient to leave the boat the way I do, but now I'm rethinking it. What do others do when leaving the boat for their Sunday night to Friday night routine?

As previously posted on other similar threads, should the shore power be disconnected or fails, for whatever reason, while you are not present, your house batteries will be depleted if the problem is not corrected within a few days. Not a safety problem, but an expensive one if it kills your batteries.

 

[Jesperjo]

We do the same thing. It’s also very common to do this for extended periods so you can run cabin heaters and/or dehumidifiers. Many people who use the boat year round use those to keep things from freezing in the winter.

As @American Flyer says though, if your shore power dies then your house batteries will drain. Even in homes, this isn’t uncommon. With LiFePo4 batteries, like in the newer tugs, this should not damage the batteries at all, but it will destroy your food, and if the power comes back on later you won’t know the food went bad. For that reason, you may want to consider a monitoring system on the boat. The one the factory recommends, and many of us have, is the ROAM (https://roamdevices.com/). It doesn’t come with a shore power monitor, but one is an add-on you can get. Another option, which is more expensive and challenging to install but has more features, is the BRNKL (https://www.brnkl.io/). Both can support shore power monitoring.