I'm looking for the voice of experience hear. This may be obvious to some of you, but not to me. What might be the lifespan for a deep cycle marine battery? My outboard has no alternator or generator to recharge the battery, so I usually just charge my battery fully about every 3 or 4 months even tho it doesn't seem to need it, and everything has been fine.

I charged it about a month ago, went fishing once, and then, after it got down to about 26 degrees last night, it was a little sluggish today. An unsettling experience since I was planning to fish downstream from the boat ramp. But since my philosophy is somewhere between frugal and cheap, I don't want to replace the battery if I just need to recharge it more often, and especially when we have freezing weather. On the other hand, I'm addicted to reliability, so if my boat's battery isn't going to deliver reliable performance no matter how often I charge it up, I'll replace it straight away.

It's in the garage now, spending the weekend on the charger.

Thanks for any insight.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.