Sean, I doubt it. Careful you don't go chasing Red hearings. Use some basic and logical fault finding skills. Yes you need a meter to test everything. OK,
First ,You need to confirm you have shore power. Ensure your meter is swicthed to AC and to a voltage high enough to do the test. Now place one leg of meter probe into the Active terminal of the shore socket. It doesn't matter which probe. Now the other probe can be placed in Earth and Neutral. You should get a reading of 110V(240 for NZ) between each and Active. You will get nothing between Earth and Neutral. If you can notget the correct voltage, then you don't have shore power. If the breaker has not tripped, you may have another safety device at the head of the Marina. It could be a ground fault interupter or Residual Current Device, (same thing different country) They seem to often become an expensive means of protecting your Circuit breaker
OK, so lets assume you have power at the shore socket. So lets suspect the AC cable to the boat. Set your meter to a continuity setting. A meter that beeps can be a big plus for this. (Oh and unplug the probes from the shore socket of course
) Now gather both plug and socket together and test the continuity between each. Earth, Phase and Neutral. This ensures you test for contiuity and for correct termintation. If a wire is swapped over, it should just blow the breaker or RCD. So the main point in the test is to ensure conituity. Not picking hairs here, but having a wire around the wrong way in an AC circuit is NOT out of polarity. Polarity is in a DC circuit. Neutral and Active swapped in a single phase circuit is called Out of Phase.
OK, so lets assume that all tests OK. Next is, how does the AC cable(lead or what you yanks call it
) connect into the boat. Now it is possible the recepticle could have an RCD device there and maybe a circuti breaker. With RCD devices, if power has failed, they don't reset automaticaly. You usually have to manually reset, so look for a button. There is often two. A test and a reset. (Good excersise to test once in a while as well.) Failing all that, you have a problem in the switch board. Lets see how we go with all the above, then let us know and I maybe able to talk you through some more.