96 or 97 speedster dual battery connections

[ricmitch]

Hi, I have recently aquired a 96 or 97 speedster I dont know much about the boat, basically inherited it from a family member that had not used it for a few years and it that needed new batteries.
There are two pos and two neg cables. I connected one set to each battery but then I decided to get a manual.

I was looking at the electrical system diagram for the speedster and it indicates that both batteries are connected together with their neg terminal. ( Parallel connection?)
Then another black cable is connected to the left engine, another black cable is going to the electrical box. The other motor gets a red and black cable connected to the right motor/starter from the otherside of the electrical box (please see attached image.) I did not realize this was the method to connect the batteries, and dont know why the cable connecting the old batteries together on the negative terminals would be gone/missing. would this have caused any problems for the system?

thank you in advance for any help

 

[Dr Honda]

You basically have them hooked up properly. But you should tie the grounds together just so the entire electrical system is happy.

As far as the year of the boat... just look at the last 2 numbers on the hull ID tag. (HIN) That's the year.

Oh... since this is a boat... I will move it to the boat section.

 

[ricmitch]

Great, thank you for the info and sorry for putting this in the wrong section.