Hi all,

I’ve done a bit of reading on this but wanted to get your opinions. Our marina has permanent fixed (not floating) docks, and for multiple reasons I find it is much easier to get in and out of the slip, as well as board the boat, when we go in bow first. However, on our 325, the shore power inlets are located on the stern in the deck box, so it is a challenge to connect up our shore power with standard 50’ cords.

We have dual 30a AC service. One for air conditioning and the other to run all other AC powered accessories.

I’ve gotten by with running 50’ 30a cords down the side of the boat (secured to the railing) to this point, and thought there was enough slack in the cords to not be an issue, but we just had a particularly severe storm go through and the rocking of the bow yanked out both shore power cords from the pedestal. Not good. Now I’m very reluctant to run them down the boat and off the bow again.

I’m strongly considering running 50’ cords down our dock and connecting them to 25’ cords using sealing collars. I know this isn’t ideal, but it would give us plenty of slack and we could run the cords directly from the dock to the stern, so it would be so much cleaner and easier to manage. For what it’s worth, lots of other boats in our marina go into their slips bow first and connect two shore power cords like I’m suggesting.

To check the voltage drop, I tested out connecting two 50’ cords and I was still getting about 112 volts at the panel, which seems fine to me, and I think it would be even less drop at 75’ instead of 100’.

I’m not worried about the “accessories” breaker because the amperage draw is pretty minimal on that one. Mostly just running the refrigerator and battery charger, occasionally the TV, etc. It’s usually not more than a few amps. We almost never run the higher draw accessories like the water heater or electric stove.

I am worried about the air conditioning running on an extended cord since that is a much higher draw. Is this a bad idea? As long as I’m getting 110v+ and the connection isn’t hot, are we ok? I typically don’t run the air conditioning for more than an hour or two at a time, and I never run it when we are away from the boat. So I think the risk is pretty minimal, but I don’t want to do something stupid. I know it can be really hard on the air conditioning units if they aren’t getting the proper voltage. I thought about buying new 25’ and 50’ 50a cords for the air conditioner just to minimize the voltage drop, but they’re so incredibly expensive and I’m not sure it’s necessary.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.