Dead Boat Battery? Never Again!

Nothing is worse than getting ready to pull away from the dock, turning the key, and hearing… nothing. Yes, a dead boat battery is a very, very depressing thing. Fortunately, in this day and age it doesn’t have to ruin a day of fishing. In fact, you can jump-start your boat with a power-pack that’s not much bigger or heavier than an over-sized cell phone. A while back I talked about one of these day-savers, in Great Boat Accessory: The Cyntur. Now, another option has just hit the market.

Weego sent me one of their new Jump Starter 44 units to test out, and at first I was a bit confused. Why was this one slightly larger than other mini-jumpers, at 6.5″ long and 3.4″ across? Sure, that’s still small enough to slide into a pocket, much less stow on a boat, but smaller is better, right? Then I wondered why it weighed 1.5 pounds, while the Weego Standard weighs half a pound. And why it cost $150, which is around 50% more than many similar products, including the Weego Standard.

Then I read the specifications.

The Weego Jump Starter 44—are you ready for this—can start gasoline engines up to 6.4L. Yes, 6.4L. In other words, there isn’t a single outboard engine on the market this unit can’t turn. The biggest (displacement-wise) outboard on the face of the planet is Seven Marine’s 6.2L V8, and there aren’t many of those around, anyway. More commonly, the biggest outboard task any Weego is likely to face would be the 5.3L Yamaha F350. In fact, the Jump Starter 44 can even turn diesels, up to the tune of 3.2L.

Another important detail about the Weego is that, unlike a traditional battery jumper, it only loses two percent of it’s juice per month. So you can stick it in a stowage box or under the console and forget about it for the entire season. And yes, it is designed for marine use, and carries an IP65 rating for water and dust resistance. Other stuff you may or may not care about: it has a built-in flashlight, 12V power port, laptop charging port, USB port, and it comes with alligator clips and a cable for jump starting. But all those things are really rather unimportant. It can jump engines up to 6.4L. Six point four liters! That is a SERIOUS amount of power.