found out my problem
Rick, sorry for the delay in responding.I had a couple guys from work come down tothe boat and help me sort it out, here goes.I thought my alt. was shot because therewas no charge with engine running, I justgot this boat and the owner never explained the "polarity" switch. When the diesel is running and the shore power is disconnected the polarity needsto be switched, the alt. has a protective circuit. If you knew allthat, here is what we did. Put a continuity tester on the batterys withshore power connected, they were takinga charge, put the cont. tester on thebatterys with no shore power and WITHthe engine running, no charge , thatswhen we flipped the switch and they started charging. I put a mirror downin behind the alt. and there is a sticker on the voltage reg. showing theterminal descriptions, this told us which ones are power and ground and alt. lead. They also found out thatall 3 of my batterys were junk. Theybrought a battery LOAD tester, clampedit on each battery and pushed the buttonto find out that they drained almostimmediately. I got all new ones, and learned to use the electrical syst.now all is well, I hope. We are goingon a 4 day trip to the Mackinaw Bridgeso I hope is is ok.I hope this helped, E mail me atwww.blowinganddrifting@yahoo.comTalk soon, Dean