Special Edition — Electricity

Taurus gets it's Shore Power (Electricity connection from the dock to the boat) through a single 50A, 240V cable.  This gives us 2 - 50A Circuits at 110V for a total capacity of 100A @ 110V.  This is enough power to simultaneously run our 4 air conditioners, heat hot water, cook on the stove, charge our batteries and wash/dry our clothes.

Not all docks, especially on the river, have readily accessible 50 amp connections so we have various adapters to be prepared for as many contingencies as possible.

The round white cord is a 25', 50A extension cord. Our normal cord is about 60' long and comes out of the back of the boat (stern).  We have had to use this cord on large docks where the stern is at the opposite end of the power pedestal where we plug in.

The long yellow cord in the middle is to convert 2-30amp connections (30A is very common) to one 50 Amp connection on the boat.  In this case we have a maximum of 60A (2x30) available to the boat so we may have to manage our loads since we can't run everything at the same time.  This is 60% of our normal capacity.

The short cord that is wrapped together with a black band (the cords are called pigtails) converts a 50A 110V connector to the 50A 240V connector.  We can only get 50A total out of this so 50% of normal capacity.

The short cord next to that converts a single 30A connector to the 50A 240 V connector.  We only get 30% capacity out of this.

The next short cord converts a single 20A connector (like you have in your house) to the 50A 240V connector giving us 20% capacity (We might only be able to run one item I listed in the first paragraph at a time on this.)

The last cord is for a different purpose.  This turns a 30A power connector into a 20A female connector (like your wall outlet) so that I can plug in a power tool.

You will note that these all have our boat name on the cord.  Since these cords are used outside of the boat and are sometimes borrowed they can easily walk off.  The whole set of cords you see here are worth ~ $2,000 new.

We could run our generator, which provides full power for everything but that is not appropriate at the dock since it could produce carbon monoxide that could go into other boats. We have heard of boaters getting carbon monoxide poisoning from other boaters running their generators. 

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