Thinking of replacing the ST60 wind instrument. Any suggestions?

[Afraal]

Hi everyone. I'm having problems again with my ST60 wind instrument. A bit over a year ago I replaced the windvane. Now I'm not getting any reading again at the instrument. The guys from Raytheon say it can be either the Vane, the cable, or the instrument itself. They suggested getting a new display, the i60 and the adaptor kit for seatalk. That will be a $800+ expense. So I wanted to ask here your thoughts and what you have done for wind: Option one, stay with Raytheon and buy the i60 and the adaptor and see if that solves the problem. Option 2, bite the bullet and replace the whole system with either a newer Raymarine or a Garmin system?

Thank you for your thoughts!

 

[Tally Ho]

I would go with a Raymarine wireless wind (the old Tac Tic device). I have that on my O’Day 322 and it works well. I did replace my transducer last year, but it was at least 12 years old.

If you don’t care about sticking with Raymarine, Garmin makes a wireless wind device.

Greg

 

[Afraal]

Thank you Greg, I don't mind sticking with Raymarine. Their customer service has been very good, that plus the current ST60 system has been on this boat for 25 years. That speaks for their quality.

 

[dmax]

Before spending any money, clean up all the connections, especially at the mast base. Highly likely it's a cable problem.

 

[Afraal]

@dmax thanks, yes! I already replaced the junction box at the base of the mast. And, I also checked the junction box below the cockpit (last year I had an issue with that junction box). I checked the voltage readings at all points for all the wires. I get normal readings in all but the blue wire which is one of the vane signals. I'm with you that this could be a problem with the cable inside the mast. Raymarine sent me a link with some testing I can do to check the cable. I'm going to do that first before I make any decisions.

 

[JoeWhite]

I would go up the mast and bring down the nanometer and directly connect it to the display unit. This will indicate if the cable is the trouble.
The ST60 on my C36 was installed on 1999. It still works. I replaced nanometer because the vain would not move. It needed lubrication only and I still have the original one, I lubricated it. I would not have replaced it if I had known about it's problem.

 

[Joe]

Option one, stay with Raytheon and buy the i60 and the adaptor and see if that solves the problem. Option 2, bite the bullet and replace the whole system with either a newer Raymarine or a Garmin system?

Thank you for your thoughts!

I upgraded everything with B&G stuff on a network. I don't use a wind display instrument... that info is handled by my MFD (chartplotter) which is the very affordable Vulcan9. Check to see if your chartplotter will display wind info. If it doesn't start saving your bucks to install a network and a multi function display to handle it all. You won't be disappointed. My Vulcan, besides many, many features, has a auto pilot controller display that uses the N2k network for all data. You want all this, trust me. My vhf sends AIS data to the chartplotter so all that data is on a big, readable screen. Yep... you want all this.. Don't wait... use the credit card and upgrade now.

 

[Afraal]

Thank you @Joe ! I think that would be my next project.
As an update, I checked again the junction box at the base of the mast for voltages and everything seemed to be fine there. But, I decided to go ahead and remove the junction box, cut an inch or so on each end of the cables to get fresh/clean wires, and spliced all the wires directly. That seemed to have fixed the problem. The instrument came alive again. I still need to go back and re-calibrate the instrument. Thank you all for your help. Setting up a neema backbone will be a nice project for the future.