Trojan Boat Forum

Glad your not on my dock , WOW , most marinas would not put up with someone doing that. I see why you have a private dock

prowlersfish wrote:Glad your not on my dock , WOW , most marinas would not put up with someone doing that. I see why you have a private dock

Paul, I think most folks understand the difference between right...and wrong.

As General Manager of a large Resort Marina, I contiue to be suprised by some peoples lack of this basic principal. Just when I thought I had seen everything.....

Thieft, vandalism, schmucks, and d-bags, this is a joke? Right? You do that down here and you will be calling your wife for bail money. I can hear it now- "no your honor, I am not a certified electrician".

Though I don't entirely condone the actions CP is advocating, I totally understand where he is coming from. I can't begin to describe how many times and how I feel when somebody else's stupidity, negligence, and lack of care for other people's property have ended up costing ME money. This seems to be more and more prevalent these days and sometimes it seems the only way to get through to these people is to kick them in the ass. Again, I'd try the diplomatic route first, and failing that would have to be brought to a certain point before taking such action CP, but I totally get your take as well.

I'd have a real problem with someone taking my shorepower cord or unplugging me. We had a lady that used to keep her insulin in the fridge on her boat. Only people close to her knew that. In a true emergency situation I don't have a problem being unplugged or boarded. I've done it at my marina but, I'm known & trusted there.

Personally, I do not think ANYONE should unplug another vessel without the authority. Call the Marina operator or, yes, a certified electrician has the right to remove the power supply if they deem there is a danger. You may very well find yourself responsible for damages regardless of how PO'ed you are.

Addressing the first idea of clamping ammeter around wire and see what current is or is not being drawn. Unless there is some new kind of amp reading portable device one would have to strip the outer insulation of the wires to put an amp reading clamp around one wire (black would be best on 120V). or put a short jumper cable between the boat plug and the doc plug that has wires without the outer insulation on them. Clamping over a bundled wire will give you no reading.

I also agree that burnt plugs are a plug over amping due to corrosion or wear. If the plug is tight and not pushed beyond its rated capacity it will not get hot and burn.

larryeddington wrote:Addressing the first idea of clamping ammeter around wire and see what current is or is not being drawn. Unless there is some new kind of amp reading portable device one would have to strip the outer insulation of the wires to put an amp reading clamp around one wire (black would be best on 120V). or put a short jumper cable between the boat plug and the doc plug that has wires without the outer insulation on them. Clamping over a bundled wire will give you no reading.

I also agree that burnt plugs are a plug over amping due to corrosion or wear. If the plug is tight and not pushed beyond its rated capacity it will not get hot and burn.

Larry, ever hear of an inductive ammeter clamp? It will... and is meant to measure current from the cable when placed around it.

What Larry is saying is when using inductive ammeter you can't just put it around the shore power cable , you would need need to separate the Common , hot and gound cables to read amps other wist the would cancel each other out and not get a reading .

prowlersfish wrote:What Larry is saying is when using inductive ammeter you can't just put it around the shore power cable , you would need need to separate the Common , hot and gound cables to read amps other wist the would cancel each other out and not get a reading .

I think that is the point....if input and output are equal everything will cancel out, but if another boats energy is using your ground it will show up due to the imbalance, conversly if your boat is leaking energy into the water it will also show as an imbalance


or have I got it wrong?

prowlersfish wrote:What Larry is saying is when using inductive ammeter you can't just put it around the shore power cable , you would need need to separate the Common , hot and gound cables to read amps other wist the would cancel each other out and not get a reading .

Paul, if you go to page one of this discussion, you'll find Perry's example of testing on target.

Yep p-dog has it correct guess I did not read his entire post.To be certain the wires need to be seperated to see what is going on in each conductor. Clamping the whole bundle will tell you of an embalance if it exists but where is teh question. IMO

And Yes I know what an inductive ammeter, I have used them since they were called Amprobes generically referring to the brand. They had needles then, now the digital ones are better.

Stripermann2 wrote:

prowlersfish wrote:What Larry is saying is when using inductive ammeter you can't just put it around the shore power cable , you would need need to separate the Common , hot and gound cables to read amps other wist the would cancel each other out and not get a reading .

Paul, if you go to page one of this discussion, you'll find Perry's example of testing on target.

Correct in that case ,I got side tracked and forgot about what Perry had posted . I was just thinking of the normal way you would use amp meter for checking amp draw , Sorry .

Boy, with the lack of civility in this thread, I hate to make it rise from the dead. Regardless, the purpose of this forum is to provide for the mutual benefit of its members. To that end, I add the following here, in an appropriate thread where it can benefit future readers:

While letting my fiberglass-shredded knuckles heal from the pre-painting bilge scrubbing earlier today, I continued my boating fun by perusing the internet for useful info about boats. I came across this. Scroll down to the bottom:

http://www.edsboattips.com/index.php?start=70

It is a discussion of exactly what we were talking about here (well, at least when the thread started). See also:

http://www.edsboattips.com/index.php?start=50

and:

http://www.edsboattips.com/maintenance- ... g-the-elci