Boat Lost All Power????

so im on the lake all day today, drinking, boarding, hanging etc. towards the end of the night, we're all telling stories and hanging out, every 15-20min i hit the blower, start the motor, and move us towards the middle of the lake after drifting... do that about 4-5x.

then the water clears up for a nice boarding session. I goto start the motor, and it just revs and revs, and doesnt turn over..

i try to hit the blower, bilge, anything, my whole switch panel stops working, no power at all, no heater, no ballast, nothing.

i play with the little battery reset button, and of course nothing. i keep trying to reset all the fuses and the main battery line, finally somehow i goto start the boat, and it turns over, still no switch board power but the boat is running.

i get it to my dock spot. Park it, tie it up and play with it again, reset the battery again, all of a sudden all my power comes back on, ballast, switches everything, so i hit the blower and turn the key, it revs for a sec and everything dies again...

Any thoughts? i left it tied to dock at the moment and covered it up.

Dead man's lanyard?

bad ground, or a dying battery

I would check all the main battery (and block) connections for corrosion or being loose.

Same symptoms I had with bad battery connections. They actually looked okay but the lead was hard and old looking. I took a battery terminal brush and brushed them in & out, reconnected and everything was golden. Mine had this weird clamping mechanism on the cable and it wouldn't clamp securely so I ended up putting some kind of metal scrap in there so it would clamp tighter.

im gonna give it a look later today.

gonna check connections, ground, then all plugs for anything loose.

someone on moomba said they heard something about the ignition plug getting loose and made everything lose power... im thinking that might be it.

Yeah sounds like a loose wire somewhere. Like others have said check those wires and I would also check the wires on the back of your ignition to make sure you have solid connections on all of them.

UPDATE:::::

so i went out there in the 100 degree heat, since it was docked, and the bilge wasnt working the water was probably a good close to foot of water in the engine. so i wanted to act fast.

1. i checked all connections in the back of the ignition, switch panel etc, everything was secure and looking good.

2. i moved to engine compartment for any loose electrical connections

3. i checked the ignition waterproof switch that trips for the 10th time, reset it, even unscrewed the ground wire, cleaned it up.

still nothing

4. i went to the battery, connections looked great, i mean the negative was maybe a millimeter up on the battery not flush down but securely connected, so in a frustration i took my wrench that i had just used to take off the 1 ground wire i smacked the negative down to make it flusher on the battery.

all of a sudden, LIFE (still not over)

the bilge kicks on and pumps, all my switches work.

so i wait until it bilges out most of the water had to run for a good 6-8min straight.

had the engine cover open for venting so i decided to start the boat now

i hear "Click" (almost more like a tiny snap, noise similar to as if you had jumper cables had them plugged into a charged battery and then touched the other 2 ends together)

and everything goes dead again.

i bang on the cable, the panel pops on

i try one more time "snap" DEAD

good thing my girl was with me, so i fixed the cable one more time stuck my head in the battery compartment to see where this noise was coming from. had her turn it over and then i saw it.

i guess what it was, on my boat (not sure of others) my negative cable is a double cable, has the big black cord then attached is a smaller black cord that gets attached to the side using the same bolt/screw combo. what was happening is they were touching in some weird way and causing like a power shut down every time i tried to start the boat, so i readjusted it, kinda moved it upward and around instead of straight next to the main line, and boat is back running like a champ.

Glad to hear you got it back up and running Phil. Now come trade it in on that 21v!