I hope this isn't the electrical gremlins paying me a visit

[Ski213]

Wanted to get some thoughts on an electrical issue I started having today on the water. Not sure if this is the place or it should have gone in the boat forum. I'm gonna dive into it more tomorrow. Probably should have done so before I started asking questions but hoping maybe somebody has had a similar issue and has some advice on a good place to start the search. 

Everything was fine last time the boat was out. Two things changed since then. One was pulling the outboard to access the hyd jack plate. Nothing disconnected (other than from battery terminals). Two was re soldering a connection at headphone type jack for black lights. 

Everything was good this morning as well until I turned on the aerator for one of the wells. At that point the front graph decided it was done for day. It turned itself off. I could turn it back on, it would go through startup then off like you pulled the plug. I could turn it right back on and same thing. I assumed it was the connection at the mount but after some messing around I determined that not to be the case. Also when I flipped the second aerator on, my partner said the graph at the console would go crazy for a sec. I don't know what crazy meant but it was enough that he recommended not doing whatever I had just done again. The nav lights were still on from the early morning. When I turned them off the deal with the console unit cleared up. The bow unit issue remained. Was in a tournament so I didn't get to mess with it much on the water. Got home, tried to recreate the problem and couldn't do it.  Front unit was fine no matter what I did. Typical.  I have no knowledge of what the front unit (797 ci2) will or will not do to protect itself from system electrical issues but I kind of felt like it was more the unit turning itself off than it losing 12vdc supply.

Any thoughts on a starting point are much appreciated. 

[Bass Turd]

How many batteries and what is connected to each? Take the batteries out and have them checked. How old are the batteries?

[Ski213]

3 batteries. 2 dedicated for 24v and one for everything else. They've been well maintained but they are close to 6 yrs old if I remember correctly. Good point I've seen bad batts do some crazy things on things other than boats in the past.  I'll prob pull the starting battery and get it checked in the morning. That would eliminate that and be an easy check. 

[Ski213]

15 hours ago, Bass Turd said:

How many batteries and what is connected to each? Take the batteries out and have them checked. How old are the batteries?

I was wrong. The starting battery is a little over 3 yrs old. I had it checked and all was good with it. 

["hamma"]

You may have been drawing to much off of that one battery at that time. . My batteries are set up the same way yours are and when I turn on to much stuff, my boats electronics act up too. Im thinking of going to a bigger and better battery as I get the cheapo walmarts.  Because they are under warrenty and theres walmarts wherever you go

[Scott F]

Your battery voltage dropped to a point where the depth finders would not work. Motors like your aerator will work when the battery charge is low but the depthfinders won't. Once you ran the boat, the battery got charged up enough that everything worked OK.

[S Hovanec]

Bow unit sounds like a low voltage issue.  I had a Raymarine unit that would shut down due to low voltage. Long runs of wire that is too small will create a voltage drop.  I need to install heavier wire to my bow unit as I believe the OEM wiring is too small.  My console unit reads 11.5v-11.9v, but the bow unit reads 10.4v-10.9v.