I got my boat detailed last week and was away for the week on vacation. I was rigging the boat last night to fish today and even though I always charge the boat after every outing, as it had been 10 days I wanted to ensure the batteries were charged fully. I have a cranking battery and then 2 12v batteries connected to run a 24v trolling motor.

 

 

I plug in the on board charger and nothing. No lights on the charger. By the way, brand new batteries all around. Fuse box was checked, still nothing. There was still juice enough to power up everything on the boat. I checked the terminals- all look good because batteries are still new. I check the wing nut to make sure everything is tight. One wing nut was loose (trolling motor negative terminal #2)  and I tighten it down. I check the remainder everything is fine. Still Nothing. 

 

I check all the cables to the terminals and when I move the cable going to the negative terminal post of the battery that had a loose wing nut it sparks. 

 

Throughly, confused and do not want to take my boat back to the marina and lose out on this nice weather here in the northeast. Any ideas/suggestions? 

Fuses?

No fuses are good. 

You'll need a volt meter to check the output of the charger. If you got 120 volts going in, (you sure the outlet you plug into works?) and you have no DC power coming out, the charger is done.

Do you plug your charger directly into a drop cord or do you have a plug in the boat wired to the charger you plug the drop cord into?

Did you plug something 120VAC into the drop cord and make sure it's good and have power to that point? Things happen. When I first went in the Air Force I had a Staff Sargent training me on a radio, he had spent 20 minutes tearing it apart because it had no power output when I looked at the back of it, handed him the plug and asked if that needed to be plugged in first.

If you have a plug wired into the boat, check the back side of it and make sure no wires got knocked loose from it during the detailing and moving everything around.

Well, well serve me a big piece of humble pie. In my younger years, I would have cursed you out way2slow for thinking I was stupid enough not to check the power input. Instead, I go out to the lantern in the driveway where I plug the extension cord powering the boat charger and what do I see, but the thunderstorms from a few days ago must have knocked the extension cord loose. I plug the extension cord into the power source and wholah!  I was never so happy(free fixes are nice) and also so embarrassed at the same time. Thanks.