Quinte Fishing

Hello everyone,
I figured I would start my search for answers here, as it would appear that many of you have quite a bit of knowledge about all things boats and electronics.
I took my son out last night in my dad's boat and attempted to hook the battery up to the harness so I could run the trolling motor. When I hooked it on, I found it a little weird that it was sparking and there appeared to be some kind of sizzling noise. I immediately unhooked it an left it that way, and seconds after smelled what smelled like smoke from an electrical fire.
Upon further inspection I noticed that the onboard charger- Charge Pro- had been the piece sizzling and had formed a bubble in the plastic. Obviously this is defective, and should no longer be used. Any thoughts on what caused this? Has anyone experienced this happening to them? Could it have been the battery, or is it the charger?
Thank you in advance, I have included a couple of pictures so you can see what I am talking about.
Brad

I only have enough electrical knowledge to be dangerous.

I don't quite understand how you were hooking it up? The trolling motor connects directly to the battery and is possibly fused depending on what the motor manual says. I'm not sure what you mean by harness.

If the motor wasn't connected directly to your battery, then that probably cooked your charger.

Hope that helps

Skunked again, Was the charger charging when you plugged in the trolling motor? BATMAN

Not charging...
Also, when I said harness, I meant just hooked up the wires that were there...they had the charger wires connected to them, so I was just using harness because I thought it was the right words to use. Not sure if water running over the charging unit could cause this? I left the boat unconcerned on Friday night to dry out , but it rained a little more before morning. The unit should have been sealed, but who knows if water was in it and short-circuited it.

As long as you connected the trolling motor directly to the battery, the charger hooked up shouldn't matter. Minn kota fuses they're charger/ battery connections, maybe for that reason.

Your charger may have simply died because it was time.

I guess you'll be shopping.

I have a Minn Kota MK 110 PC and it works well. I charge two batteries through a Blue Sea ARC. I hooked the charger up to a NOCO Genius AC port plug. I just plug the boat in with an extesion cord and everything is charged.

Works slick.