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From: wsixslc wsixslc (no email)
Date: Sun Sep 14 2003 - 20:23:47 EDT
John, here is my $.02.
First of all, my wife and I own a 28 foot sloop here in western washington. Between hers and my own "careers" you could say we have been in the marine business since the early 90s. I have sold marine electronics, she has worked for yards who have installed them. We both installed our own on our sailboat as well as perform a bunch of other marine work (like repowers).
SIMRAD: we have a Simrad IS11 setup on our sloop. Wind and Depth/Speedlog combo. It was the best system we could find that fit our needs about 5 years ago. Pros: all NMEA based. All comms between the units is NMEA. No proprietary protocols. Cons: All centralized into one "databox" mounted down and away. If we loose that, we loose all instruments. Also, the unit heads have had fogging problems. We will be sending them to get serviced for this problem this winter. Simrad does not make this line anymore, I think the new line is called 'IS15', I dont think it has a central databox anymore. Another note about Simrad. They bought Navico/Corus a couple years ago and buried Navico's autopilot line and adopted the Corus sailing instruments. So the new line of sail instruments may be an updated Corus line of which I have no experience. Except for the fogging, we have been very happy with current set of Simrad electronics. I do like their chartplotters but cant justify buying one <g>.
FURUNO: Highly respected brand. Their new instruments are moving away from NMEA towards Ethernet (implemented in computer networks all over the world). This could be very interesting as it overcomes the serial data communication limitations with NMEA (faster and bidirectional). It will be interesting to see what they do with this. Also, Furuno just started selling sailboat instruments a few years ago. I dont know if it is their own designs or if they bought someone elses.
RAYMARINE: Their sail instruments are of course the original "Autohelm" SeaTalk line that has been very popular since the early 90s. I used to sell these. They are very dependable and easy to install. I am not sure where they are on features in comparison to other brands. These are very flexible if you stay within the brand and do not try to mix brands. You can connect other brand NMEA devices like ChartPlotters to these. You might need a "converter" box to convert SeaTalk to NMEA. We have a RAYMARINE (Raytheon) autopilot (ST4000) and radar (SL72) and like it very much.
I would say if the original RAYMARINE instruments are working well and give you the features you want, then stick with them. They will likely last a long while. You should be able to add an different brand chart plotter / GPS without problem. If your dealer says you need to replace all instruments with the same brand, consider finding another dealer. All modern marine electronics can be connected to "talk" to each other given the hands of a competent dealer/installer (finding one can be a problem, but I will save that story for later <g>).
Hope this helps.
Robert
w6slc
John Bickforc <> wrote:
*** Just noticed a typo in my name as it appears in the "From:" block
above - the last letter is a "d". I'll have to see about fixing
that. jcb ***
A bit about myself: I'm 54 years old, live in Eastern Washington,
USA, and am looking forward to a second retirement in a year or two,
after which my wife and I anticipate transitioning to cruising. I
learned to sail at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD, in 1967 and
have dreamed ever since of having my own boat to sail around the
Caribbean, carrying charter cruisers wherever they wanted to go. In
June this year we sold our Ericson 30+ that we had for 20 years to
move up to something with a bit more room.
In about two weeks I will be taking delivery of a new 43 foot
catamaran equiped with two Yanmar saildrives so the discussion thread
a few messages ago was quite interesting. (The story of buying this
new boat is rather long so I'll save that for posting to a web page
somewhere).
The second part of the subject of this message relates to this new
boat. The factory installed RayMarine wind, depth, and speed
instruments so I was thinking about sticking with that brand for the
radar and navigation (GPS/chart plotter). However, the electronics
sales manager at the yard that will be "commissioning" the boat tried
to steer me away from that brand towards Furuno or Simrad.
Does anyone have experience with any of those brands, either good or
bad?
Should I listen to the dealer or stick with the same brand for better
integration? (This question could start a whole new discussion thread
about the merits of integrated units vs individual components.)
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