Because of a job transfer, I will be moving my 356 to Florida in the very near future. I am thinking of adding radar when the boat is being upgraded with air conditioning. What is the consenus of having radar in Florida?
I don't live in Flordia or have Radar, but I believe it depends on how you are going to use the boat. Since you will now be in Flordia, are you going to start doing overnight passages out the the Bahamas. If yes, they you will want it. If you are just going to sail as you did in you old location than NO. You currently don't need it why would you in Flordia. Just my 2 cents.
Radar is nice In florida we dont have too many days with fog, but we have a good number of days in the summer with pretty strong thunderstorms. Radar could help you with avoiding some of the worst of it. I dont have it and have not missed it, but if you are doing a lot of work on the atlantic side of florida or in the straits there is a lot of shipping traffic. hope this helps
weather is weather, and anytime you have reduced vis radar will be useful;ditto at night, when you can use it to spot other ships, land, etc. In southern FL in particular i've found radar to be very useful around the mangroves-in a seeming endless wall of mangroves you can't see the channel entrances, but they pop right out on radar
Having been hit with heavy rain when going down the St. Johns on a weekend during a fishing tournament with strong current surrounded by many small boats, radar kept us from a disaster. We often have very heavy rain storms here. Radar can help avoid them or prepare for them or steer through them without hitting something. We have a lot of very nice nights for sailing and radar sure makes night sailing safer. Cost of radar vs safety and the cost of your boat is minimal. Just be sure and put the screen at the helm.
As one of the other posters has said..we don't get much fog in Florida. That is true, but when you do get it, it's thick. I just returned from the Keys the middle of February. We made a run from Marathon back to Marco Island. We ran thru 4 fog banks on the way back. One of the fog banks was about 15 miles deep with very poor visibility! The last one being the entrance to Marco Island. I am VERY GLAD I had radar. You never know when you may need it.
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