battery charging questions?!?!?!

[kheid]

Well i have ran into my 1st problem on the boat wondering if anybody has any thoughts.I have a perko switch and always start the motor on battery 1 and have been running the boat the 1st few times out on battery 1 which is charging fine and the voltmeter on my gauges is always reading around 12 no problems there! Well my battery for all the lights, vhf ,radio,etc was a little low the other day so while running i switched the perko over to battery 2 to try and charge the 2nd battery and the voltmeter gauge read 0 which leads me to believe its not charging the 2nd battery? Anyway the voltmeter and gauges are connected via the plug in wire under the key switch and is hooked up fine, i have no power to the gauges till i turn the key on which is how it should be .I was thinking maybe the perko switch was bad on terminal 2 but dont really know. I dont want to keep charging the battery on land everytime i go out .......Any thoughts