New 255XE battery charging set up?....

[Mr.Magoo34]

Hi everyone I just joined and just become an owner of a 2024 Yamaha 255XE. The plan is to trailer it in and out of Lake Michigan from my driveway. Do I need a maintenance battery charger at my driveway? The plan is mostly to use it on good weekends in the summer.

 

[anmut]

Do you need it? No.

Is it nice to know you're batteries are topped off everytime you go to launch? Absolutely.

Really depends if you want to do as much as possible to prevent issues while on the boat.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Absolutely. These boats with the E Dr. and/or electric steering need to have fully charged batteries or they can have issues. Keep the batteries fully charged, and you won’t have any troubles.

Get a NOCO 20 Also get the AC adapter port to make plugging in the battery charger easy.

 

[tdonoughue]

Also useful to know: These boats have magnetos, not alternators. Several technical differences I won't get into, but from a user standpoint, it takes longer for them to charge your battery than you are used to in your car. Will it work? Sure. But as @anmut said, depends on your use profile. If you are out cruising for hours, hardly ever floating, you probably will have no issues with no charger. If you run out 15 min to your spot, sit and hang and run your radio all day, then run 15 min back in, you will probably have issues with no charger. And everything in between.

Safest bet? Get one. Cheap insurance in my book.

Edited to add: It is pointed out to me that magneto is likely not the right term for what is in our boat. See, please, 1.8L and TR-1 Alternator definitions and operating characteristics and Ignition magneto - Wikipedia . So I sit corrected on the terminology. Still, our generators/alternators are not strong, so you still should not expect the recharge rate you get off of, say, a car alternator.

 

[F.M.]

I will second what @tdonoughue said. Unless you’re driving 1 hour or more after running a stereo and enjoy the day, your batteries will never reach a full charge without some kind of maintainer.