Don't waste money on a wind indicator that can't be set up to show
TRUE wind data. That means it must have boat speed and direction input to make the calculation. You can find older instruments that do this...however.. they normally need to be hooked up to a proprietary instrument network. For instance, the older Nexus instruments work pretty well if you can find a wind
and speed unit that can communicate. The problem with this is parts availability as the manufacturer phases out its support and inventory is depleted.
Quite frankly, whether you race or not is irrelevant. Having instant true wind data is a great advantage and convenience for the cruiser or day sailor as well. A wind instrument that only shows apparent wind data is less important and functional. We can install tell tales to trim the sails and a windex to find the sweet spot.... I like "shroud tells" .... heck I have all those things on my boat... and I use them all.
This biggest obstacle to upgrading my own system was cost.... just never could justify the expense when I knew I could figure out true wind with a boat compass and use the tell tails for everything else. When my boat budget got a little spike... a new wind instrument and chartplotter were my first investments. The wind sensor provides input to the chart plotter that uses its gps data to calculate true wind. So... if you have a budget of $1500 or so... I would install a NMEA2000 network compatible system into which you can eventually integrate other N2k instruments and sensors. For example, I have an vhf radio that transmits AIS data over the N2k network to my chartplotter/mfd, besides the sailing instruments.
Since you're starting from scratch here's an unbelievable package. It comes with all the sensors, the chartplotter acts as a multi-function display. You can also integrate auto pilot info, AIS data, audio, engine data, etc. into the N2k system and it can be controlled at the display...
Here's a package with a traditional instrument display....
B&G is part of Navico... which owns Lowrance and Simrad. You may find some of the same instruments under those names also... for instance the Simrad R35 vhf radio is the same as the B&G V50.
Garmin and Raymarine have similar packages... which many of the forum members will advocate and prefer. They all work well... so shop around. I only discussed the Simrad/B&G products because that's what I have.
The gist of my comment is: Invest in a system that will provide complete data and not become obsolete in the near future.
