Thought I would throw in a little (it's snowing hard here in NC and I am
contemplating life).  Four group 27 Deep Cycle marine batteries from  Walmart
(at $70-75/each) give you 460 amp hours of 12vdc storage.  They  might be
junk, but so far the one I bought for eval seems to be a pretty  good deal
(and easy to handle size and weight wise).  And I tried it out  - cranks my FL
T160s just fine.

At ~$.60/12vdc DC amp hour, that's hard to beat.  Except there's no
bragging rights for having the best batteries at the internet watering  hole.  ;-)
Jim

In a message dated 1/30/2010 12:00:26 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
trawlers-and-trawlering-request@lists.samurai.com writes:

http://www.trojanbattery.com/Products/GolfCart.aspx

Each  battery has 225 amps @ 6 V. It will take 4 of these batteries to give
you
450 amps of 12 V. Trojan has other sizes at different amps. But you  will
always need two 6 volt batteries to have 12 V, and the amps stay the  same
as
listed for one of the 6 V batteries. Four 6 V batteries will give  you 12 V
at
double the amps listed for one of the 6 volt  batteries.

The problem I have had with Wal Mart batteries is that three out of four of
them will be great, it is that other one that seems to read lower voltage in a
short period of time, and one bad battery in a bank can destroy the rest of
them. That is why when you replace one, you should replace them all.
It seems that when I have had house bank problems, it is never at the dock but
it is in some remote cove where replacements are not readily available, plus
it is not fun to pack those heavy batteries down the dock and into the battery
box..many things I would rather do. I would rather pay the price and go with
the best the first time instead of listening to a special someone complain
that the microwave keeps shutting down the inverter.

Thoughts from Puget Sound,
Dave

There are few consumers who purchase as many batteries at once as we do.
Therefore, publications like Consumer Reports can be inaccurate when they
praise certain Wal-Mart or Sears batteries because they purchase only one of
each model within each brand which are used to start cars. So, they find a
certain model of Wal-Mart battery which performs well, but to take a worst
case scenario (using a previous email) we could buy 4 and get one turkey.

This story is very old so I won't use the brand name, but I met a foreman
from a famous battery plant in the Midwest while we were waiting in line at
an auto service center. He told me that one of their very big customers
instructed them to pass all marginal batteries. Reason? They make more money
on warranty exchanges than on good batteries!

In Annapolis, some yards sell you or install for you Interstate batteries
delivered from Baltimore (fresh.) Neither of those parties would benefit
from the protocol in the previous paragraph - IMHO.

What should we individual owners do? I think that we should carefully
examine who we are and determine how we really use our boats. As another
listee has said, we are not in this for bragging rights (I hope.) So my
intended use is to be an ICW cruiser, rarely will I be out of sight of land
or the reach of commo with the USCG or a towing outfit, or a fellow boater.
If I buy a brand name battery with wholesalers and retailers along my
intended routes, I do not feel that I must invest in Surrette, or Concorde
(AGM) or even Trojan. SAMS, COSTCO, or Interstate would be fine for my
intended use. As a matter of SOP, I do keep some small Optimas on board for
communications and starting backup. Battery failure for me should be only an
inconvenience.

This might be viewed as a cost-benefit analysis. To this I add, "Do not let
the best become the enemy of the good."

Ron Rogers