New autopilot or existing Robertson

[Old Sailor 2]

You folks are such a wealth of information. My 1992 Passage 42 has what I think is the original Robertson autopilot. I recently installed a new Raymarine e7 chartplotter which does not interface with the old Robertson. I am pondering a new Raymarine autopilot. I am wondering if I can reuse old drive unit but install the new brains . And whether it is better to use them (chartplotter and autopilot) independently or to bite the bullet and buy the Raymarine chartplotter. What do you think???
Sandy

 

[Mulf]

I vote for all the same brand.

I set up Dreamboat with all Raymarine instruments; Wind, Speed, Depth, Autopilot and both Helm and Nav Table Chartplotters. Having them all talk to each other has advantages. Examples are; my autopilot can sail to compass heading or to wind direction, and the depth and anchor alarms and can be looked at and silenced at the helm or down at the nav table plotter. I know other people can make different brand instruments talk to each other if the NEMA feed is right but the setup I have is really nice.

 

[jwieneck]

I have seen it set up both ways. On the ocean boats I have crewed on many of the boat do not connect the chart plotter to the auto helm. I have crewed for 3 different boats on the Caribbean 1500 each boat keep their auto helm as a stand alone. You could still us it on wind vang but not with the plotter. The reason given from each skipper was that when they are connected the crew tends not to pay as much attention when on watch etc. The other reason was that sea state, wind, stuff like that is always changing so it is easier for the crew to just come up or down a few degrees vs changing the course on the plotter. The ocean class I took also told people not to connect the two same reason. I do not have my plotter talking to my auto helms because of what the course said. I do fine this way.

 

[Old Sailor 2]

I have seen it set up both ways. On the ocean boats I have crewed on many of the boat do not connect the chart plotter to the auto helm. I have crewed for 3 different boats on the Caribbean 1500 each boat keep their auto helm as a stand alone. You could still us it on wind vang but not with the plotter. The reason given from each skipper was that when they are connected the crew tends not to pay as much attention when on watch etc. The other reason was that sea state, wind, stuff like that is always changing so it is easier for the crew to just come up or down a few degrees vs changing the course on the plotter. The ocean class I took also told people not to connect the two same reason. I do not have my plotter talking to my auto helms because of what the course said. I do fine this way.

quite interesting philosophy that I had not considered before. Thanks for this point of view.