GPS/Radar screen size

[CharlieCobra]

Oh Joy doesn't have a Nav station

so the cockpit is the Nav station. The fact that she's a tiller boat complicates things a bit.

 

[sailaway78]

I don't like

my things at the nav station. When I am driving the boat, I am at the helm, not down below. A laptop at the nav station will be totally useless in the first heave thunderstorm encountered. Or at least most will die with the first three drops of water. I use a laptop, with Garmin charts installed to plan the following days agenda, or the following weeks. I can mark waypoints, get course direction and distance. But the navigation is done at the helm. Same goes for radar. A radar that is below decks is totally useless when it is most needed, IMHO. Of course I have been called anal. I don't want anything tied to anything else. I don't want one display for radar and GPS. I don't want the auto pilot tied in to the GPS. I want each instrument to be stand alone. I read about all the systems some of you have, and that is your own personal preferance, but it makes me wonder, what happened to KISS. I think some of you are making a great mystery and a major deal out of basic navigation. You can purchase a Garmin 498C, with a very good depth finder built in, and all the US coastal charts included, for under 1K. It will navigate you anywhere you want to go, and tell you how much water is under the keel. I have never found any need for more than this.

 

[Rick D]

Roberto: Re: GPS

I purchased a GPS mouse on e-bay for about $40. It's some generic China brand. I attached it to the hatch handle on the hatch over the nav station with Velcro. Works with Google Earth and the Seaclear ll navigation software. RD

 

[Maine Sail]

Well..

which is it N&E??Quote N&E: "I don't want anything tied to anything else. I want each instrument to be stand alone."and then just a mere sentence away..Quote N&E: "You can purchase a Garmin 498C, with a very good depth finder built in, and all the US coastal charts included, for under 1K. It will navigate you anywhere you want to go, and tell you how much water is under the keel."Just curious wording that's all as depth and GPS have always been sold as stand alone units.....

 

[sailaway78]

You got me there Main

You got me on that one. I do much prefer all stand alone, but do admit to having a GPS with a depth finder built in. Mostly because it came that way. I have a stand alone depth, which was on the boat. Other than that, nothing on the boat is connected to anything else. And I hope it didn't sound as if I was criticizing anyone for their choices. Everyone has their own way and preferances. Mine are to not tie different instruments together.

 

[Maine Sail]

No you didn't

Sound like you were criticizing..Quote N&E: "And I hope it didn't sound as if I was criticizing anyone for their choices."Do think about this though? Combining instruments via the NMEA standard is no different electrically than having your instruments connected to the panel and turned on. A spike is a spike and it can take out any instrument connected and turned on regardless of if it's NEMA wired or not. Of course, in a lightning storm any instrument on the boat, wired or not, is subject to being fried unless it's in a Faraday box..The benefits to tying your instruments together with NEMA, so they can communicate things like heading data, is only a benefit and I can't for the life of me see a reason not to connect instruments. Here's an example: My pedestal guard had no room left in it for another separate power wire and I needed to power my depth sounder. Because they were both Raymarine I was able to use the sea talk cable from the autopilot head to power my depth sounder and Raymarine fully supports doing this.. Everything on a boat is interconnected in some way or another whether it's through ground or positive when the power is turned on..

 

[sailaway78]

I'm just old and anal

And I might say sometimes?? stubborn and set in my ways. Of course you had more than likely already figured that out. But I do have a question. On the Raymarine SeaTalk instruments, from what I see, the sea talk is nothing more than a daisy chain, connecting one intsrument to the next, and to the next ad infitum. So what happens if you have say, a wind machine, which is connected to , a depth guage, then a GPS and then an auto pilot, and the wind machine blows up. Or whatever instrument is in front. Does not the rest of the chain then stop working.

 

[Tom S]

Anal is good. It keeps the seacocks closed

No. All the Raymarine instruments have their own feeds from their own transducers items. That is the important thing everyone should remember and I think the misconception with regards to Seatalk. Its not a "dependant" network connection like a rare few systems. Its like NMEA, its just passing some info back and forthI have had the Raymarine Speed/Knotlog go south and it didn't affect the other nav instruments in line on Seatalk from working.Seatalk does provide 12V power for the nav instruments (for the lower power units), but from what I know personally, and verified with Raymarine, those in-out daisychain connections for 12V and Ground are straight through connections. It has nothing to do with the display unit working. Even if the unit was so #@*&#% FUBAR and actually shorted 12V to ground (I would think that would be very rare to almost impossible) all I would have to do is pop the mounting plate, disconnect Seatalk from that one display, connect it next in line and you'd be fine. If you were really anal you could connect individual 12V and Ground to each nav instrument and just use the 3rd seatalk wire for the "buss" that shares navigation info back and forth.