Boat Electronics Keep Rebooting? How I Fixed a Marine Startup Brownout

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 02:00:43 +0000

What causes your boat electronics to randomly reboot the moment you power up your chartplotters? For two seasons, our Nautitech 46 Open had a frustrating gremlin — the Victron Cerbo GX would restart whenever the sailing instruments came online. No faults, no alarms, just… silence, then a reboot.In this video I finally track it down.Using an oscilloscope, I captured exactly what was happening during startup — and the culprit was a classic marine startup brownout: the simultaneous inrush current from multiple devices pulling the voltage low enough to drop the Cerbo GX offline. I'll explain how cable impedance turns ordinary startup loads into a real problem, walk through the clues that ruled out other causes, and show the capacitor-bank fix that solved it for good.

After the fix: clean startup every time⚓ Though our symptoms were Cerbo GX-specific, the troubleshooting process applies to unexplained reboots across marine electrical systems — chartplotters, autopilots, instrument displays, and more.🛠️ Parts & links in the description below.
👇 Drop a comment if you've chased a similar ghost on your boat.#victron #cerbogx #marineelectronics #nautitech46 #boatlife #sailing #marineelectrical #boatmaintenance #sailinglife