www.iFourWinns.com

Those are valid points. While the dealer has been great, we are the ones with a lot to lose. Our plan is to get down there every four to six weeks to check things out for ourselves. I had not thought about the shore power being disconnected. I'll have to bring this up with my dealer. As I indicated, he lives at the marina so I can ask that he check after storms. We've already made arrangements for him to haul and store the boat in case of a hurricane.

As to the CO monitor, I believe that it is a bad unit and needs to be replaced. It went off on Friday and Saturday night while we were staying on the boat. Our engines and generator were off, and there weren't any boats running near us. When the alarm woke us, we were fairly certain that there was no real danger so we reset it. It continued to go off so we ended up cutting off power to it. Apparently, the same thing happened on Thursday night, and the dealer reacted similarly. I am going to insist that the unit be replaced and see how that works. While I was fine just turning the power off last weekend, I would not feel comfortable doing so with my children onboard.

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2008 Four Winns 358

The CO alarms are tedious, at best. They're wired to the Systems Battery.

The good part, however, is the main bilge pump is NOT on the same battery. It's tied to one of the starting batteries. And those can be tied together for starting in the event one drops too low to start it's engine.

There is only one battery for powering all the 12v devices. This is insufficient. The CO alarm will go off when the 12v level drops too low. This is good, you don't want to be sleeping at night and lose the alarm. But at the same time you don't want to be woken in the middle of the night because of a bogus condition.

My solution was to add two 6v batteries (in series) to the Systems circuit. I've had absolutely no troubles ever since.

The 358 design is deficient in using only one battery this way. It's just bad, there's no way around it.

If I were leaving my boat unattended for that long I'd certainly consider subscribing to SeaKey for monitoring. They can monitor not only the boat's location but various other sensors (like 12v).

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista