I plugged my boat in for a few minutes,and was doing something else on the front deck then I smelt something burnt at first I thought it was the neighbor. Then I walked to back of boat and if got stronger so I opened the rear hatch and that's when the smell hit me.so I hurried and unplugged it and was looking for the problem but everything looked good. So I decided to pull the charger cover off and the smell got even worse them I saw the damage to it. It was parked under my carport of my house,I'm so lucky that I didn't leave right after like I was Goin to but went to check something on front deck first.it could of been alot worse. That was my stock triton charger that was on it.

Wow, that could have been really bad... Glad you were hanging around and noticed it!

It's pretty amazing the energy a 110V line can put out. What year model is your boat? I wonder if newer chargers have built-in fault detection.

Look into the Minn Kota Chargers. They are great.

It's an 05. I already got a minn-kota charger on it

You should always plug your charger into a GFCI outlet when available. It could save burning up your boat. I had a similar incident occur years ago and fortunately my brother caught it in time. A fire next to the fuel tank is not a good thing.

Looks like one of the two power transformers lost its insulating layers probably because of age and summer heat and shorted a few windings and smoldering inside the case which likely safely contained the overheating issues albeit for some odors. Many newer chargers are pretty much sealed so water does not get in and any overheats like this are largely contained in the case. I don't see that a ground leakage occurred so a GFCI may not have triggered any sooner than a breaker here.

when you are charging the rear hatch should be open while charging there are a lot of heat an gasses put out by charging batteries.