Our Hunter 306 was fully outfitted in 2004 by the dealer with a Raymarine C80 chartplotter, ST60 wind, ST40 depth and speed, and an ST4000+ wheel autopilot, all mounted on navpods at the helm. Everything worked well in 2016 when we were last in the water, but the C80 is now dead, and the wind transducer is close to dead (direction works fine, but the paddle wheel paddles only in very high gusts). I really liked the old system, and regularly used everything except the speedo, which was next to useless given the marine fouling: after a few seasons, I left the transducer up out of it's socket in the hull.
I'm aware of the transition to Seatalk ng backbone, so initially I planned to buy an Axiom 9 chartplotter and the Seatalk-to-Seatalkng conversion kit. Having noticed that the wind transducer is dead, I'm wondering what my options are. I'm thinking
1) Maybe I can just buy a new ST60 transducer (?) and go with the conversion kit and Axiom 9? But it's unclear to me if the new-style transducers (with the big "egg" between vane and paddle wheel) are compatible with my older ST60, which doesn't have the big egg. I can't go up the mast for a couple of weeks to check it out, as we're on land.
2) Bite the bullet, gut everything, and get a fully upgraded system. But this might require changing the depth thru-hull, which I'm really not ready to do right now. Recall that the old depth and speed transducers screw into plastic large-diameter thru-hulls. I assume this would also be more expensive.
In order, here's what I really care about: depth, chartplotter, autopilot, chartplotter talking to autopilot to transfer waypoints, wind. The speed transducer, I would see how far I can throw...
Thanks for your thoughts.
Jay
I'm aware of the transition to Seatalk ng backbone, so initially I planned to buy an Axiom 9 chartplotter and the Seatalk-to-Seatalkng conversion kit. Having noticed that the wind transducer is dead, I'm wondering what my options are. I'm thinking
1) Maybe I can just buy a new ST60 transducer (?) and go with the conversion kit and Axiom 9? But it's unclear to me if the new-style transducers (with the big "egg" between vane and paddle wheel) are compatible with my older ST60, which doesn't have the big egg. I can't go up the mast for a couple of weeks to check it out, as we're on land.
2) Bite the bullet, gut everything, and get a fully upgraded system. But this might require changing the depth thru-hull, which I'm really not ready to do right now. Recall that the old depth and speed transducers screw into plastic large-diameter thru-hulls. I assume this would also be more expensive.
In order, here's what I really care about: depth, chartplotter, autopilot, chartplotter talking to autopilot to transfer waypoints, wind. The speed transducer, I would see how far I can throw...
Thanks for your thoughts.
Jay