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I made three upgrades on the boat...
first I installed a pair of
absorbed glass mat batteries to replace the two 4 year old flooded chemistry batteries..... the absorbed glass mat charges 40% faster than flooded batteries,which is a big consideration when you mainly fish at night, or you run a bait tank for extended hours...I never had to put a charger on the house battery once this season...
second: I bought a small solar panel this season, made by sun force.. it produces a 350MA trickle charge which equates to about a 1.75 amp input based on 5 hours of sun light.. I did this mainly to aid my 40 A alternator on my outboard, most nights, the run in is not enough to recharge the batteries after a night of short stops and starts with lights, radios and other accessories on.. eventualy I needed to hook the house battery to a external charger... coupled with the new batteries, the system remained fully charged all season ( Early April until last week) for the first time since I've owned the boat ( since 1980)..
Last upgrade was a new GPS plotter/depthfinder... the new unit is a Garmin 541S... it replaced a monochrome out dated GPS thad did n ot have mapping capabilities.. I like the unit alot, it is very user friendly and is much eaiser to see with aging eyes....I cant say alot about the sounder part, I use my Lowrance as a primary and only selected the combo unit as a back up..
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