The first boat had old alkaline submarine "nife" batteries, that leaked their contents on to the deck, leaving a nasty yellow stain. They turned my finger nails blue when mopping up.
The next set of memorable batteries belonged to a 1947 classic yacht that still had the lead acid batteries added after the war. They had steel cases and were single cells wired in series to provide 110 volts dc throughout the vessel. The wiring was the original lead cased rubber wires, connected to the lights and sockets with beautiful gun metal switches. During a gale, the whole circuit would become live, requiring rubber gloves to turn on the lights. It got so bad at times that we would have to disconnect the batteries.
The following classic yacht, larger but built around the same time had two enormous banks of batteries that also supplied everything on board with 110 DC volts, including built in fridges, freezers and the loos. There was a battery room with a 20 gallon container of distilled water to top them up, usually twice week. There were enormous loads as it drove the anchor winch that was connected by a thrown knife switch.
The next classic (in 2000) was revamped with 7 sets of gel batteries. I can't remember how many, but around 50 to provide sufficient power to run the boat through 7 victron multies. This could run a limited amount of A/C overnight plus fridges and freezers etc.
More recently on a modern yacht, we had more modern AGM batteries charged through shore power with the Victron centaur charger. This boiled two sets dry and nearly set the boat on fire, when left unattended for a few weeks with the charger on (it turns out that when on float, if a fridge kicked on, the charge would resort to absorb and stay charging for a timed period of an hour, this happening almost hourly!). Victron paid for new batteries eventually.
For the last 20 years, we have lived off grid ashore. We started with second hand single cell Excide batteries, 24 volts, running through a Victron 5 KW multi. These were upgraded 7 years ago to 40 kwh of Rolls lead acid with the R-cap and are still good.
Got to love them...
Mike
