Just to clear up any circut voltage confusion, I've designed and built custom circuits for my job at a bio tech company. I have some experience dealing with multiple smaller solenoid valves that caused voltage instability and spikes. On one of my solenoid circuits, I had to integrate control signal for specialized pumps that needed to be extremely precise and consistent. It was critical they were completely isolated and not affected by any voltage fluctuations on any part of the circuit, which I spent considerable time getting around issues. Typically inductors or solenoids would cause voltage drops or spikes, but shouldn't be as serious as
@Sportster-2001-951C-Stock is talking about in this situation. A well designed circuit would integrate circuit designs to reduce the severity of voltage drops and spikes. When a starter solenoid turns on and energized, it tries to pull significantly more power than the battery can output, at any given moment, causing the overall voltage on the circuit to drop or even become negative. The voltage spike is caused by the solenoid being d-energized and releasing that energy it used to create a magnetic field, back to electrical energy. Without a proper circuit design, a small solenoid could easily output an excess of 400V, but that was the limit of my oscilloscope for my circuit. With some basic circuit protection effort, it should drop significantly and still last a brief moment to not cause issues to the rest of the circuit. Unless you have ICs that a sensitive and delicate, and use data lines to communicate, such as an ECM, those are a bit harder to protect against voltage fluctuations and still able to function, making them susceptible to be damaged. If under voltage or over voltage was that big of an issue, aftermarket sound systems would cause extensive problems. If I push my 800W amp to 70% power, powering it with 2x deep cranking batteries with a battery tender connected, voltage on my accessory circuit is fine with just vocals. But once the bass kicks and my single 10" sub is going, it will immediately cause a voltage drop from 14.4V to 12.8V. I measured that using a digital voltmeter/dual usb charger unit I swapped my dashboard 12V outlet for. Haven't had time to connect my oscilloscope to it to get an accurate analysis or better view of what's happening, but I would expect to see greater voltage drops than my voltmeter is indicating, albeit briefly. Likewise, I would also see a few instances of voltage spikes, with durations of those spikes based upon the signal frequency going to the sub. In that situation, with under voltage a big deal, it'd damage my electrical system. In reality, I don't have any issues as do most people with aftermarket sound systems with significantly more power.
Since one of his engines turns over still, the solenoid is working fine. If it there was some under voltage scenario, there wouldn't be enough voltage to initially engage the solenoid or it would behave abnormal, such as very slow to engage with weaker actuating force. Additionally, even though yes, small ICs or any component exposed to high voltage for a split second can be damaged, it kinda factors down to power delivery. If it is less than millisecond, not much power was delivered to cause serious problems. To protect against basic voltage spikes, can use a combination of diodes to isolate components and ensure voltage isn't reversed if the circuit's voltage potential momentarily flips. You'd also utilizie capacitors to stabilize the voltage by either acting like a damper against voltage spikes to drop the intensity of the voltage spike or rapidly supply a large amount of energy into the circuit when voltage drops to bring it back up to target voltage. Everything put together, you isolate critical systems and also drastically reduce the min and max voltage of the spike stabilize to acceptable levels. You can go further and include a voltage smoothing component. There's more to circuits than just basic voltage, as changes in signal frequencies and waveforms make a difference. If someone wanted to rule out the starter solenoid, using a voltmeter and turning it on should suffice. If the voltage drops, it's working, otherwise it isn't.
Looking at the LM7805 5Vdc regulator, the input range is 7-35V. The typical use case is someone connecting a 12V power supply or using a battery pack composed of 1.5V batteries in series with a total voltage that's some multiple of 1.5V. Besides the common 9V or 24V power supplies, those are below the 35V operating limit. That 35V limit is usually a performance limit for that regulator to function at and still output 5V. Yes, if you put in a sustained higher voltage, it most likely wont output 5V as consistently when the input is between 7-35V and defeat the purpose of it. If you used that in a circuit with a solenoid with voltage spikes, you'd incorporate a basic voltage protection circuit designs to ensure spikes up don't exceed 35V. Even if you go higher, it's still a brief and doubt it'd cause problems. The only likely outcome is that instead of 5V on the output, given a 50V input spike, it may just as briefly increase output by a bit to like 5.1V, requiring an oscilloscope to properly detect that. What does damage components easily is heat. If a spike lasts too long, or you exceed the 1.5A limit with the LM7805, that can damage it. You could probably put in 40V with a single 5V RGB LED on the output that would draw such little current, you're not really getting close to the thermal limit and it'd be fine.
Regarding jump starting, it's a bad idea to connect jumper cables to a marine battery with all the ignition cables still connected. When you're jump starting, you will be outputting higher voltages for longer time to everything that is connected to the battery, which can be easily overwhelmed and not meant to protect against that. Even with newer cars with extensive electrical equipment ( such as BMW, Mercedes, or Porsche), if you need to jump start them, you connect jumper cables to designated connecting points that make sure no voltage fluctuations are transferred to all the computer systems directly connected to the battery.
But as
@halfsack82 said, he never jumped the boat so unlikeIy ECM or other electrical systems would be damaged, unless some physical cut or degradation of the wiring harness. I would definitely agree with
@JPass and likely sounds like an issue with the ignition system. Sorry if this is a go to solution, but did you check your spark plugs or replace them recently to make sure they weren't fouled? You mentioned you pulled your boat out of storage and not sure how long you had it in there or last time service was performed.