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Hi Wayne,
I own a 1981 Atlantic 44 and have done just that. The first question would be what you would consider a good sized battery bank.
If your Atlantic is set up the way mine is, you most likely have a large fiberglass battery box under the AC units on the port forward bulkhead in the engine room. I did not want to add another box as space is tight enough down there, so settled on 4-6volt golf cart batteries from Interstate, giving me a 450 amphr. house bank.
The boat origninally had 2 - 4D's for engine start/house and 1 group 24 for the generator. I remove the 4D's and was able to replace the starting batteries with 2 group 65 (1000cca) batteries for the engines, retained the group 24 for the generator and had enough room in the box for the 4-6v golf cart batteries. BTW, depending on how you place the batteries, you could get 2 group 31's for starting in place of the group 65's. I have twin Perkins 6.354's and these batteries are rated to start engines up to 300hp.
Now, as far as the inverter is concerned, a 2500 W Trace inverter-charger was already on board along with the original battery charger. I made some minor wiring changes to the existing system. The original battery charger is a 3 bank charger. The previous owner disconnected one bank as he used the inverter to charge one of the origninal 4D's. I left that alone, so that the charger is charging one engine and the gen set battery.
I installed a battery post and rewired all the negative's to this post as I needed to isolate them for an amp-hr meter that I installed to monitor the golf cart batteries. I then added a 150 amp battery combiner from Yandina (were sold at West Marine, but I bought a refurbished unit directly from Yandina's site at substantial savings). This combiner is connected to the house bank (golf carts) and the starboard starting battery.
I also changed out both alternators on the engines for 100 amp 3 stage alternators as sold by the Battery Shack in Marathon, FL. This was to insure charging of the house bank while underway and they do a good job. Typically when the amp hour meter indicates about 160-180 amp hours used, 6 hours of running brings that number down to 60-80 amp hours of additional charging needed. That's usually taken care of while back at the dock or with the generator while cooking.
Hope this gives you some ideas,
Paul
Paul Schlechter
44 Atlantic
Heart's Desire
http:mysite.verizon.net/resok538
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