While fishing on 12/31/12 and getting ready to leave the lake I found my battery didn't have enough oomph to start my big motor. I found out my jumper cables weren't long enough to reach from the trolling batteries up front to the cranking battery in the rear. Fortunately a friend was fishing near by and we jumped my battery from his boat. This battery wasn't that old and I keep them plugged in with the on board charger all the time in the garage. I plugged the battery back in and since the place I bought the battery wasn't open the next day it was a week (on the on board charger all this time) before I was able to take it in.

When I took it in they checked each cell saying they are all OK but said they would hook it up to their charger overnight so I could pick it up the next day. When I went back into pick it up they said the battery was bad and fortunately it was still 21 days inside the window where they gave me a new battery. Just to praise Interstate Batteries here.

Now for the rest of the story here I'll talk about some clues that I ignored that probably should have told me I had a problem battery much sooner. It was probably early summer that my Lowrance graph on the front of the boat would at times shut off when I would start my big motor to move to another spot. This hadn't happened before but it didn't happen every time and when the graph did shut down I wasn't having any issues at getting the big motor started. The Lowrance X97 graph on the back never did shut down.

I'm just pointing out how I ignored this clue about something being different and if I had checked it out sooner I should have discovered I had a problem battery. It's my understanding that the graphs will shut down when they get a low voltage and I had ignored these clues and am passing it on to perhaps help someone else take notice about little clues that are telling us things we probably ought to be checking out.