We will soon have a boat, in France, which has a diesel main engine and lots of batteries which will need charging at various times.
Most of the time we'll probably use shore power and we may also get some solar panels for maintaining the batteries but it would be good to be able to charge the batteries 'independently' as it were when we're moored somewhere with no shore power for example.
So, can one get small diesel powered generators, just a few hundred watts would be ample, which can be started manually (i.e. without a battery)? If such are available where should I be looking?
Diesel would be safer and more practical than petrol because we'll have diesel on board for the main engines and the heating.