My boat 1995 355 aft.
2 30 amp power cords.
Shore 2 runs two ac units and the ac water pump.
Shore 1 runs everything else.
We were in a transient slip hooked to a 50 amp pole and I was using a splitter to go 1-50 to 2-30s.
We were using pretty much everything one morning. Both ac units, stove making eggs, waffle maker, coffee maker, hot water heater,… everything.
Shore one tripped and we lost all of our breakfast making ability. We shut down all the breakers and engaged shore 1 again. Any breaker we would turn on would trip shore 1.
Unplugged the boat and fired up the generator and everything functioned as normal. Made breakfast, then went back to troubleshooting.
After looking closely I noticed that shore 1 had 150 volts going to the panel and shore 2 had 90! That 90 was running the ac units btw.
We metered the pole and it was 120 going into the boat. Hmmm.
So I phoned a friend. They said to look under the shore power connection in the boat and I would see another little cap to lift that looked like another power connection, but what is in it is two breakers! One for hot, and one for neutral. So the neutral was tripped. Pushed the breaker, all was well with the electrical genies again.
I don’t know why they put breakers on the neutral, and it didn’t seem safe the way it made the voltage so out of whack. I do wonder if some recent work we had done to make us not trip breakers on new style poles impacts how these breakers work when they trip now. My boat had shared neutrals between shore 1 and 2. The marina electrician separated them when the marina converted to new gfci power poles.
Anyhow, thought I would share if anyone has a similar issue in the future. I had recently taken photos of those breakers wondering why and what they did. I learned what they do this week.
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