www.iFourWinns.com

New Vista 298 owner. trying to figure out the best way to set up the AC/DC panel when I have the boat in the slip and the power cord plugged into the shore power. Would love advice here to make sure I have the correct settings.

I turned the Shore Power ON, turned the Battery Charger ON, turned the refrigerator ON and left EVERYTHING else off. Did I leave the boat in the correct settings?

Thanks for any help you can offer here.

When we leave our 328 and head home, in the AC panel our shorepower is on along with the battery charger and two fridges only.

Everything in our DC panel is off.

Since your 298 is new to you, be carefull when you arrive back to your boat and start turning all the breakers on in your AC and DC panels. In the DC panel you can turn the "FWD Bilge" pump on maunally by the breaker in the DC panel. If you turn this breaker to on, your FWD Bilge will come on and stay on until somebody turns it off. Just an F.Y.I. I assume your 298 is set up the same way as our 328?

Mike.

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Current Boat
- 2001 Four Winns 328 Vista "Hour Decision"
- 2010 310 Mercury Inflatable

Previous Boats
- 30' Doral Prestancia
- 25' Doral Citation

Thanks Mike. The previous owner had told me not to leave the Battery Charger on while away from the boat. He said it could fry the batteries (all 3 new last year). He suggested I leave it on for 10 minutes when I get back to the boat each weekend and that should be all I need.

I found that odd.

I leave it on full time. On my 318, there is a switch under the DC section for the galley fridge, to allow that to run off the batteries in the event of a shore power outage. If you keep anything that could go bad in that fridge, I'd leave it turned on.

Otherwise, you do the same as I do. No issues here.

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2007 358 T-5.7GXi IB
Previous Boats
'08 H240, '08 V318, '04 268, '04 225

Yep, that's odd (however chargers can fry batteries, but not unless the charger isn't functioning correctly). Let's assume it's a 30Amp charger (Guest 6232, 20/5/5). So your house battery charges at 20A, in 10 minutes you're going to replace (assuming nothing else running on 12VDC) 3.3Ah back into your house battery. That's not going to do anything but allow you to run down your house battery. If you have a 120Ah house battery, and you use 50% of it - you'll need at least 3 hours, likely more to replace the charge.
So, as the others have said - I leave the charger on, anytime we are plugged in. BTW, I'm no battery expert, so I'm sure I'm not 100% correct above - but it shows you why you need to leave the charger on if you plan on actually using your boat.

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1969 Chris Craft Commander 47
1999 Four Winns 328 Vista - SOLD

Make complete sense to me, thanks Guys!

I only turn off my hot water tank, and turn off the tap for my city water. I have never heard of problems leaving the shore power and charges on.

Cheers

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Vista 318 2007

Your factory installed charger was probably a guest 3 stage charger, the manual specifically says it won't boil the batteries in the introduction.

http://www.marinco.com/files/support/pr ... /2621A.pdf

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2004 Vista 298
Twin 5.7L Volvo Penta GXi-E