On Wed, 8 Mar 2006 11:19:08 -0500, "Glenn Ashmore"
wrote:

I am thinking it would
be better to series wire each side so the longer cables are carrying 12V and
half the amps

Am I missing something?

Possibly.

You would then be paralleling two 12 volt batteries with unequal
lengths of connecting cable. That could result in uneven rates of
charge and discharge between the port side and stbd side due to IR
losses in the longer cables.

There may be a way to avoid that but I'm struggling with trying to
describe it without resorting to ASCII art. Basically you run two
jumpers from port to stbd to make the parallel battery, and then you
pick up the positive feed from one side and the negative feed from the
other. This requires a bit more wire but it tends to even out the IR
losses between the two banks.

There are also some safety considerations to think about when
paralleling large batteries. If one battery develops a short in a
cell, it is potentially dangerous to have its parallel twin
discharging into it at high amps. One way to minimize the risk is to
insert a large fuse or breaker into one of the parallel links.