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Home Port: Marion, Massachusetts
Vessel Info: 2006 3200 open
Anyone having issues connecting to to pedestals with ground fault breakers?
Connected 2 shore power cordsets to 30 amp side on pedestal then boat as soon as I turn on cockpit breakers pedestal gfi’s trip. System on boat checked out fine.
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Home Port: south haven
Vessel Info: 2006 3200 open 8.1 crusaders
Had that problem this year in new marina even with all boat breakers off as soon as i plugged into receps on boat and flipped the mains at the shore power conns it would trip. so then i moved my cord to a different shore pedestal and it was fine. Called in the electrician who had installed the breakers and he fixed the problem by replacing the gfcis. This marina has had this issue with several boats.
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Home Port: Marion, Massachusetts
Vessel Info: 2006 3200 open
Thanks for the quick replies. Had all breakers in boat off as well. Pointing towards pedestal gfci’s. Marina electrician mentioned they’re running into the issue regularly.
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Home Port: South haven,mi
Vessel Info: 2006 3200 0pen 8.1 crusaders
Faulty gfci's were a problem for me also even though they had recently replaced them in all in the pedestals it seems a high number were faulty. Slip owner tried convincing me it was my boat because they had recently upgraded all the marina wiring.
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Home Port: Ashtabula, OH
Vessel Info: 1986 Tiara 3600 Open, Crusader 454's
One thing you may want to try is if someone at your marina has a good quality 30 amp splitter, borrow that and test with a single 30 amp cord. That way, even if you do have neutrals crossed on your boat, you shouldn't be tripping the breaker.
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So it seems that all the Tiara's at our marina have the same problem with the new GFCI pedestals. Some other brands are having problems as well. Here is what we found, the new NEC code for marina power pedestals require GFCI protected outlets for the shore power cords. These look for a maximum of 30 milliamperes max difference between the hot and neutral wires within the shore power feed, if the pedestal outlet sees anything more than 30 milliamperes difference between hot and neutral then it trips the pedestal breakers. On Tiara's, with (2) 30 amp shore cords, the neutral gets shared behind the main breaker panel and the pedestals cannot match the hot and neutrals because it cannot differentiate with shared neutral. The solution was to separate the shore 1 and shore 2 neutrals to 2 different bus bars(my boat had 2 neutral bus bars that were connected via jumper wire) keep the hots associated with its neutrals so that each shore power feed has its own dedicated hot and neutrals. On my boat, the only thing on shore power 2 is the cabin AC/Heat. Everything works fine now with not trips. Hope this helps others as they move to these new pedestals.
