Battery charger issues 28te

[Jforesta]

Gone down to boat this weekend to charge batteries. Hooked up shore power to a extension cord and shore power adapter.
Turned shore power breaker on (ok) turned breaker on for battery charger and the circuit immediately tripped.no changes to wiring, working fine when decommissioned boat in fall.
It is a Charles 5000 unit. Any sugestions????
Joe

[RobS]

Did you confirm no reverse polarity light and did you try anything else on the AC side, like the microwave?

[catalina_mike]

If your batteries were down pretty low the charger might be drawing more current than a regular extension cord can provide. Most extension cords barely handle 12 amps much less higher loads will decrease the voltage and cause a issue.

[Jforesta]

After further investigation, I eliminated the charger as an issue. Seems anything I plug into the boats a/c will trip the GFI breaker that I have a heavy duty extenstion plunged into at the boat yard.
It may be that the boats ground wire is attached to the common buss bar at the boats a/c panel.
I was told this will cause the gfi to trip. I need to find a outlet without a gfi to test this theory.
Any thoughts?

[Jforesta]

By the way, when I plug the extension cord directly to the yards gfi and bypass the boats shore power the gfi does not trip.

[RobS]

I would test the outlet(s) at the boatyard that you are using with one of these testers. I keep one aboard and always check the shorepower before plugging in when I am at a transient marina.

Then I would unscrew and drop down the shorepower connector at the stern of the boat and check the connections there to see if something has either disconnected, become loose or become "green". Then you can unscrew the AC/DC panel in the cabin and check those connections as well but it's most likely the connector in the cockpit that's subject to the environment.

It certainly is not a "the way the boat is wired" issue as between myself and you she's been plugged in all over the northeast without issue..

[Tree]

I'll second what Rob has said about green wires. We had an issue where every time we came back after a wet trip, I'd plug the shore power in and as soon as I put the battery charger on the electric would trip.

After checking everything but the obvious, I found that the live on the boat connection at the stern was slightly green, not much but it was enough. Could well be worth checking out.

[catalina_mike]

I had to put a new plug and strip the wiring back to clean mine up as well...

[Jforesta]

Will do. Thanks for the replies. I will let you know.