Marine Electronics Question

[Ducati]

There are plenty and confusing choices for marine electronics.

I will eventually equip my 40' sailboat with autohelm, radar, gps, depth, speed, wind etc.

Looking for suggestions as to the best brands?

What about some of the wireless products? Are the good?

Do I need to go back to University to learn how to work them?
(I'm not very bright so I like simple.)

Thanks

D

 

[Ken13559]

Lead line for depth. Drop a piece of bread from bow and time it pass the stern. you should be able to calculate your boat speed. All done with Fifth Grade math. No need University degree.

 

[Ed Schenck]

Almost everyone has Raymarine and that is what you will hear most. My instrumentation is all Nexus, now ComNav, and has served well for eight years. My 18000+ H37C has been steered by a wheel pilot(Simrad) without fail for nine years. Still I think you will want a below deck unit, probably hydraulic. My radar is a cheap JRC unit.

Mostly it is a matter of $$$. Lots of choices but they are costly. I would love to have a big chartplotter with radar overlay for example. Yet I sailed from Lake Erie to the west coast of Florida always knowing where I was and in complete safety.

 

[Jerry Clark H356 SV Persi]

Raymarine is the standard

I commissioned my 356 in March of 03. This is my seventh season on Kentucky Lake. I have sailed over 4,000 miles and spent 474 days on board. I have an integrated color chartplotter, sonar, radar, below decks autopilot, gps, wind, speed and depth instruments.

This is my seventh season and last weekend I had my first maintenance. My radar unit quit working and as I use it continuously while out on the lake, I thought it may have died. In fact, I just got an e-mail yesterday that it was a loose connection and my cost was $174. I think that tells the story about Raymarine. It is good equipment and I would highly recommend it. I think the newer systems have a much better network than my system has with connections that are similar to ethernet. I would think they would work even better.

 

[Tim R.]

I have Raymarine instruments and AP. My chartplotter and radar are Garmin. Garmin has an ethernet network it uses to connect devices. The radar was very easy to wire and you can cut the cable and recrimp connectors if you need to. The Raymarine instruments and AP were easy to wire because they mainly use the seatalk bus.

I helped my friend install his Raymarine radar last week and it still had one of those 1/2" thick proprietary cables that Raymarine says not to cut. It may have been becuase his chartplotter was older(2-3 years) but that cable was a PITA to route down through the guard.

 

[zeehag]

my formosa has jrc radar, simrad hydraulic autopilot(mounted on quadrant, not on wheel) garmin gps adn some i donot remember anemometer....they all work well.......

 

[sailaway78]

My experience

I have Raymarine auto pilot, and Garmin chartplotter. Both seem to be fine. I have friends with Raymarine chartplotters, and I believe the Garmin is much more user friendly. At least for us computer/electronics nerds.

 

[Chuckbear]

I would only caution anyone that gets recommendations on equipment, especially Raymarine, that has been working for years with little or no problems. That equipment is not the same equipment that comes out of the factory today so you can not really do a good comparison from equipment made 5 years or even a few years ago. It is apples and oranges. Without getting into the discussion, I am a certified Raymarine tech and other than an RL70 radar which was on our boat when we bought it, there is not nor will there be any Raymarine equipment on our boat. As an installer, my recommendations would be, Standard Horizon for best price and performance if you just want a straight plotter. Furuno at the top of the integrated systems followed by Garmin. I am also a fan of Simrad for instruments, etc. I would highly recommend that anyone planning an integrated system only look at the N2K systems at this point in time. Chuck

 

[Tom Spohn]

When I went through the same process a few years ago I took a look at what was installed on the ferry system, tugs, and workboats in our area. Result: 100% Furuno. I installed an integrated system and it has performed flawlessly. My Simrad tiller pilot is also a great performer. In the past I have also had good results with Garmin and would consider it in the future.

 

[Dan]

a few things to note:

1. there's a RUMOR going around that Garmin will buy Raymarine
2. Simrad has a fabulous new radar system based on different technology that uses less power and is way more detailed