I am off to the boat show tomorrow and I am in the market for some electronics for my mottle33 at present all it has is an I 40 bidata.
With the amount of boat dollars I have poured into her my budget will be limited to a max of 8 boat dollars. I am looking at costal cruising and maybe a lord how in a year or two.
What would the advice be on what to get first and brand
I would suggest a Garmin 72H handheld GPS, about $150.
After that I would either use an old laptop and a GPS puck with a Sirf 4 chip and charts of your choice. Seaclea2www.sping.com/seaclear/ or OpenCPN programmes. opencpn.org/404page.shtml I personally use Seaclear mainly because I have done so for a long time. This will be a first class unit for a cost of less than $200.
Or go straight to a 12v mini computer and a 22 inch monitor or combination TV using the same puck and programmes. The ultimate nav gear probably about $600.
Hi Ramona
I already have a hand held gps i have the laptop so will look at downloading one of those programs.
Maybe i should have been a little more precise i am looking at an auto pilot and chart plotter that can be hooked up to each other. I only have a hand held vhf so will want one thinking of one being able to hook up ais but don't know much about it. Also if funds go that far i would like an anchor winch and wind instruments that will also he able to hook up to auto pilot.
HI Twodogs,
I am unsure what your 8 boat dollars means? I have different brand combo, which a lot of people frown on, but I havent found any real issue with it.
I am using the Raymarine Evo Tiller, and the GPS/chartplotter is a Garmin GPSMap620.
The only negative is because my Garomin GPSmap is pretty old, it was only NMEA 0183, an the autohelm needs a higher bit rate, ie NMEA 2000.
I used an Anderson funky little adaptor to handle the conversion, works great and really ahppy with it.
I can recommend the EVO if you get a show deal or something, but use a Chartplotter thta outputs NMEA 2000.
Hi,
I use a Raymarine Evolution autopilot, with their electro/mechanical actuator, interfaced with a small A series plotter. The plotter is to small, but I am happy with the autopilot.
Total cost was well under your budget. I did the install myself and costs included some extras to replace and rewire switch panels to give the required 15 amp circuit. There were other costs to interface the plotter with my older series wind instruments. Interfacing with the wind instruments is well worthwhile as it allows you to set the autopilot to hold course relative to the wind.
Sorry, I got the balun vendor wrong, it was Actisense, not Anderson.
Bulletproof, but you only need this when you have a nmea mismatch.
LMY, I am the same as you, my Tacktick wind instruments were all NMEA 0183, so I feed these to the chartplotter on 0183, then use a tx port off the chartplotter to the autohelm.
The chartplotter repeats any string it receives to the tx output, so I get wind and gps data to the autohelm.
See linky to actisens balun www.actisense.com/products/nmea-2000-gateway-ngw-1/
If you are thinking about going for the i40 wind, have a look at the reviews first. Not a lot of good things said about the Rotavecta transducer.
for AIS, have a look at the Vespermarine Xb-8000. It has wifi so you can also send AIS and NMEA data to your iPad. I run inav-x on the iPad and it will display AIS traffic on the chart. There are also some free apps to display NMEA data. I also have a couple of apps on my android phone which will display NMEA data, quite handy to be anywhere on the boat and have a range of instruments in your pocket.
some of the newer plotters have wifi as well, definitely worth considering to get the data onto mobile devices.
check out this site for good reviews etc
www.panbo.com/
I ended up purchasing a full B&G system a little more expensive than a raymarine system but this gave me a linear auto pilot and i hope better long-term support. B&G came in at about the same price as a Garmin system byt seamed superior.
Hi Two Dogs,
If you ask HG nicely he will turn your photo the right way around for you
I got the full ray marine system at the boat show
E7d chart plotter
I60 Wind, close hauled, I 50 speed and depth
B and G would probably have been better but I already had a ray marine auto pilot
One good thing is that the guys at the ray marine helpline are great and talk you through any setup probs
Any way the whole thing seems great so far and cost about 4 boat dollars
Select to expand quoteMcNaughtical said..
Hi Two Dogs,
If you ask HG nicely he will turn your photo the right way around for you
Two dogs needs to let his main sheet out Mc Nautical and take a a couple of reefs in his main sail then his avatar would be the right way around
Hes got to much sail up 
