I have a new
Mercury 50hp 2stroke on my
boat, with an
alternator output (per the manual) of 18A and have two questions:
1. Is that 18A output "peak", i.e. only at high
RPM? What might I expect at idle?
(I'd just check myself on the
boat, but it's -7C (19F) outside and the boat is tucked away in a barn for the winter)
2. Is it bad to run an
outboard at idle for long periods of time?
(the
outboard has just over 20 hours on it so far, so not sure if it is fully broken in and how that might affect the situation)
I'm planning on doing some
extended cruising this coming summer where I will be fairly long periods on the hook in one place (e.g. 5-7 days) and am wondering whether running the
Mercury outboard a certain amount each day would be sufficient to top up my
batteries (250AH total in house bank, 90AH deep cycle starting batter). I know that this is fairly standard practice with folks with
diesel engines, but am unsure if a gas outboard would be as tolerant to e.g. idling for 2 hours, or whether the
alternator output would be enough for it to be worthwhile. It's also possible to increase the speed of the
engine when in neutral, so it would be technically possible to e.g. run the
engine at pretty much anywhere in its normal operating range, but again, not sure if that's good to do with the engine not being under load, etc. (noise at higher
RPM would of course also be an annoyance, but perhaps tolerable as a single-season solution).
(And yes, I know lots of folks recommend a portable
generator such the
Honda, and yes, that would probably be a good solution, but no, I don't really have a boat buck to throw at one...)
Thanks.