As you can see in the photos below (system won’t let me post so I will send them in a separate email) I badly need to replace my depth finder and knot meter. I think they (and their wiring) are probably original. The displays are Silva 2000 and in terrible shape. The sender units are unknown to me.
I managed to pull out the knot meter. In the couple of years I’ve owned the boat it hasn’t worked and as I was extracting it the wire fell off! It was way past time to fix.
I have not managed to extract the depth sensor – I assume I will have to apply some mechanical force from underneath. And then I wonder if I can reuse the thru-hull. Before I started the project I had a dry bilge in this area.
My question is what sensor & displays would folks suggest I look at? I’m not looking for anything fancy-smancy – some simple system maybe with a combined display rather than the two separate displays I currently have. But I am open to suggestions to aid in my research.
And what is best practice in terms of installation? As you can see from the photo there is an internal wooden backing plate which I anticipate I would remove and replace. Butyl tape I assume goes as a sealant on the thru-hull? Or should that be 3M 4200?
I’m off to the Toronto Boat Show next week so any hints and tips to help make me a smarter customer would be greatly appreciated.
Neil - had started to type a long reply, but it by necessity wandered around a bit too much.
Short story - have Garmin GX95SV (or somesuch number) Chart plotter that has built-in GPS. Have another chart-plotter that displays CHS “Raster” charts. HAve an old Raymarine “TriData” system that still has working depth, and I tied that into the Garmin with some stuff I made.
2023, either we a) use the supplied Garmin “Fishfinder” attached inside the hull, or b) a NMEA-2000 Airmar Depthsounder, or c) keep my old Raymarine for now, along with my electronics interface box.
People love Raymarine, or Garmin, or B&G, or… All work. If you choose something “NMEA-2000” compliant, it’ll last you for decades, and is plug-and-play with lots of other instrumentation. So, choose something that will a) fit in your boat, b) fit in your budget, and c) is available.
Oh, and like Thor, we also have an antique lead-line onboard, but never used it.
You have to do your own research but be aware that if you ever want to expand the network it is a good plan to stick with your chosen manufacturer. As mentioned above, they all work but even though all nmea 2000 they often don’t work as well with each other as with their own brand. This is particularly true when doing software updates. FWIW I have Raymarine, mostly because when I replaced everything else I was keeping my Raymarine autopilot and I wanted to insure continuity.
We went with Raymarine when we replaced our original Datamarine depth and speedo. At that time we also added a chart plotter and since have added wind instruments from Raymarine. We installed a tri-ducer (speed, temp, depth) which is nice until the speed paddlewheel gets gummed up. If doing the install afresh, I would spring for the new tri-ducer w/o a paddlewheel. We did not need water temp, but it added little to the cost and the old biologist in me likes the information. Because we have a tri-ducer, one of the old thru-hulls just has the plug in it. To properly glass it over would be a chunk of change (for the same reason we have the water intake and head discharge thru hulls capped as we use an Airhead).
I believe most new transducers will come with new thru hulls. I would use the new thru hulls. The only worry will be the hole in the hull - too small is easily dealt with, too big a hole is problematic. I found that most thru hulls for transducers had hole requirements that varied by 1/8" or so. The hole on our boat was about 1/8" too big. The yard mechanic assisting in the install laughed at me when I asked about it.
Removing the old thru-hulls is an easy task with two people. One inside stepping on the thru hull and leaning port/starbd/fore/aft as directed by the second person under the hull with a thin spackling knife and razor blade. Once you get the blade just a little bit between hull and thru hull, the thru hull comes out quick as you cut the bedding compound. Ours are bedded with either 4200 or Life Seal - I cannot recall.
If you are absolutely certain you will never add additional instruments, then you could go with dedicated depth and speed gauges. Because you have two gauges right now, I would go with two dedicated gauges again just to simplify the cockpit appearance. Otherwise you will need to come up with a clean patch to the second hole. Of course, you will have the same hole size problem. The Raymarine and old Data Marine holes for us were not compatible, by just a little bit. We needed to fashion a plate that was painted to match the cockpit and then bonded to the bulkhead. It looks good. Luckily we had leftover paint from when we painted the deck/cockpit and the yard painter likes me.
However, if you think you may add other instruments in the future, you might think about a gauge that can display multiple types of information. Where our old speed and depth gauges were, we now have a Raymarine i60 wind gauge and a Raymarine i70 that can display a variety of information. We normally have the i70 showing a close-haul wind gauge and the depth and speed thru the water. That is all easily seen by most in the cockpit and the majority of the information is repeated at the helm (except for wind angles) on our chart plotter.
Good luck and have fun with the shopping at the boat shows. Once you start to play with the stuff you may find that your planned simple needs are no longer simple . . . .
As Paul Miller says, sticking to one brand makes life easier. Raymarine uses proprietary cables so if you are going between that and another type you have to have adaptors. If you have a GPS unit that you like and are planning to keep, consider going with the same brand. Sailing magazines generally suggest that B&G are a bit better for sailboat racing.
When I got La Reina she came with a 1982 Signet MK151 System 1000 for speed and depth and a Mk 154 System 1500 wind display. They were basic but had large digits on the display were easy to read and very reliable. I replace the speed and depth with the new Signet system and do not like it as well. It has more features but going through the menus is not easy. I still have the old wind system. It will only display apparent wind angle and speed but is still working fine.
At the boat show it may not be easy but try to get the techies to walk you through changing the data on display so you can see how easy/intuitive the displays are to work with. Also look at the size of the numbers on the displays. Try standing back to the distance you will be from the instruments when you are at the helm. Can you read them. My displays are right at the binnacle. Many are mounted on the cabin bulkhead so farther away.
A wired wind sensor tends to be more reliable than wireless but takes bait more to set up. wired instruments tend to be less expensive as are black and white displays.
Many of the new transducers combine speed and depth in one. I suspect that you may not be able to use the old holes. Boat yard tend to use 3M 5200 for installing the thruhulls. I don’t think butyl is used for that application. You will have to decide if you want flush or mushroom style thruhulls. The flush are marginally faster but the mushroom are easier to install.
When I am sailing I like to have speed through the water, depth and apparent wind speed and angle displayed on my instruments. On my GPS I have the chart, course over ground and speed over ground displayed. By comparing speed over ground to speed through the water I can determine the current. By comparing the ship’s compass heading to the course overground I can calculate leeway. Think about the data you like to see when you are sailing and then set those up on the displays at the boat show and see if you like them.
My GPS screen is 7" on the diagonal so I don’t like to add too much data to it. Unless room is an issue I would go with two displays. One display may become cluttered with data or you may not be able to show all of the information you would like to see at one time and find you have to switch back and forth.
To some extent we tend to be more comfortable with what we are used to. My first chart plotter was a Garmin and I prefer that to Raymarine. I currently have a Lowrance charter plotter and like it better than Raymarine but still prefer the Garmin. My chart plotter is mounted at the helm. At the time I bought the Lowrance the Raymarine and Garmin plotters used a magnet to keep the SD card door closed. The magnets had a negative effect on the ships compass so I went with the Lawrence which did not use a magnet.
PS,
Also ask about the process for updating software on the systems. I can’t remember the details but one, Garmin, B&G or Raymarine required and extra device to download software unless you were also using their chart plotter.
Mark Powers
I’m a geek, so watching the data on my NMEA-2000 network is more fun than shooting skeets.
The Garmin starts up sending a couple of proprietary “Parameter Group Numbers” (PGNs) over the data bus, then it goes into its “I’m playing nice with everyone and will send NMEA PGNs now” mode. My Garmin GMI-20 is there, and, if I remember, the software was indeed updated on it when I updated the chart plotter last summer. I’d assume Raymarine, B&G etc does exactly the same thing. I’m more than welcome to be corrected.
Joe on his 26 had an issue with his Raymarine wheel-mounted autopilot not getting needed software updates when his chart plotter was not Raymarine.
I can see why manufacturers do this for conformity, control, and simplicity, but it does cause issues with what is supposed to be an open, well supported standard.
Oh well.
JohnS NS26C sitting at Bath ON,
the chart plotter is here at home,
but without a power cable for it.
The comments about the tradeoffs between brand loyalty vs. mixing and matching on NMEA-2000 are spot on. It all depends what you enjoy spending time/money on.
I used to be loyal to Raymarine, until I put a lot of their stuff for my previous boat and discovered that:
Products in their line don’t even reliably talk with each other because they’ve bought up other companies and slapped their label on an unchanged, incompatible instruments, e.g., my Raymarine chartplotter/MFD could display wind data from my Raymarine-branded (but actually TackTik) wireless wind instrument but refused to do anything that required feeding that data into a computation.
Basic measurements have changed, e.g., you can’t upgrade to a new transducer and assume it will fit the old thru-hull
They have eliminated support for features without updating them in manuals, e.g., pressing two buttons simultaneously was documented as initiating sailing to wind angle rather than compass course but didn’t do so in my newly purchased autopilot
Customer support is poor, e.g., it took me six weeks going around with them before they came out and confirmed that yes, that feature worked on a previous boat with the same model autopilot but didn’t on this boat because it isn’t supported anymore. No reply to the follow-up question whether they cared that the current manual still advertised it as working.
Updating the firmware required downloading updates to an SD card on your computer, then transferring the SD card to the MFD. And, woe betide you if you forgot what order the update files were supposed to be loaded in.
Updating the firmware was frequently necessary, and could solve problems, but could also simultaneously introduce other problems.
So, I’m not in a position to make positive recommendations, but I can tell you which manufacturer I don’t recommend.
John,
I had the Lowrance plotter (NEMA 200 compliant) and was considering adding new wind, speed and depth instruments. My old speed and depth display was failing and Signet did not recommend repairing it. I looked into Raymarine, Garmin and B&G. For one of the brands, software updates were to be done by putting the updates onto a SD card and putting the card into the plotter. It would not work with the plotter I had. One of the brands required that I buy a small black box that would take the updates. The third brand could be updated at the instruments. I can’t remember which was which. Based on the past performance of the Signet I went with them. They were more basic but provided what I needed/wanted. In hind sight I should have gone with BG or Garmin.
Neil
Keep it simple. I believe you have been getting along without any instruments until now so all the discussion about adding wind speed, direction and such on a network may be outside of your requirements. Even a knot log isn’t necessary really. You can look over the side and get a rough idea of all these.
Depth is another story, I really like my depth sounder and use it all the time. There are quite a few rocks in Georgian Bay. You may also want a chart plotter?
I made a shoe for the fishing transducer that fits inside the existing hole from the outside. The cable is just long enough on a 26 to get to the binnacle without any splices.
This Garmin system works very well. Software updated through your cell phone. Knot log from the GPS. Water temp. The Chart is very good.
Or you can buy knotmeter and depth sounder transducers that will replace the ones in your holes for the garmin chartplotter head but they cost way more than the fishing sounders last I looked, and you may have to remove the through hulls you have and install the new ones.
Tom
26C #28
Penetang
Anyone going to the Toronto Boat show? I’ll be there next Sunday.
