Norfolk Broads and shore power electricity cards

[Cestlaviesaidtheoldfolks]

We’re hiring a boat and I gather we need to buy electricity cards to use shore power. Has anybody used these and know how long they last for? The boat company were to unable to advise me.

One of our party has a cpap machine and the boat company said we’d need to use shore power which is fine but you have to buy cards in advance but they couldn’t say how many.

There is no refund so we don’t want to spend £50 only to find out we only needed £5.

Most boats have a 12volt electrical system which runs off a battery which the engine recharges.

on the Norfolk broads depending on the time of year parking spots at quays are tricky to get.
often you’d anchor off the quay and paddle ashore.

where they have water and power it’s usually one or two parking spaces and the deal is that you pull up, fill up with water and then move off so the next boat can fill up.

it’s not really ok to stay parked there - it would be like trying to park at a petrol station.

You’d only get an electrical hook up otherwise at the home marina of the boat, and even that could be tricky as few marinas have a lot of them.

do you really need 240v? Will the boat system of 12v not be possible?

This might help

Yes one of our party has a cpap machine and the boat company has said the power generated during the day won’t be enough for the machine to be plugged in overnight. We’ll just need to find a mooring with overnight shore power. My question was how much electricity it might take though so we knew how many cards to buy.

Thank you that’s really helpful.