New/used instruments

[Geoff Nelson]

OK- it's time. All my Datamarine Corinthians have bitten the dust (except depth) and it is time to "upgrade". Anyone have any suggestions? Mark Reed suggested the Raymarine St-60 but they are quite pricey and stock is limited on ebay. I just want something simple and reliable that I can install myself and hopefully will have the ability to talk to my autopilot (when I upgrade that).

Thanks,

G-

 

[Geoff Johnson]

Have you considered bringing them back to life? I had mine refurbished at a cost of a couple of hundred dollars by DMI (http://www.dmimarine.com/) and they are good as new. I don't think new ones will provide any more functionality unless you really want to network them. To me the Windex, sails and the waves are much better wind indicators than any instrument.

 

[Geoff Nelson]

Are instruments necessary?

Thanks Geoff. I agree that keeping your head out of the boat is the best instrument of all and is how I usually sail (I race dinghy's so am used to being without instruments) but it is nice to actually see true and apparent windspeed and also the boat speed/set. If for no other reason than my knowledge or to help others onboard. Things like AWA are also nice to have and to get these hooked up to a non-posessed autohelm would be nice too.

Anyway, regards rebuilding, I do not like the positioning of the current instrumants (on the sides of the companionway so anyone sitting there makes them unreadable as do the lines hanging down from the cabin top). They are all analogue and some I don't even know what they do (like Wind Expansion and TPI) and the Loran is obviously a waste of space.... All these things brought me to the conclusion I want a nice clean binacle mount system. (Then I can either fill the holes in the cabin or more likely put nice big ports there for ventilation/light).

Thoughts?

 

[Chris Miller]

two thoughts...

I can offer two thoughts-

1. I have a Datamarine 5100 system that I just removed from our boat that is for sale. Everything is there except the depth, which was destroyed during removal. The remote cockpit unit is a pedastal mount.

2. I just replaced these with Raymarine ST60's which you can get a 3 set (wind speed and depth) for $1300 advertised, but I got mine from West Marine in 3 days after telling them about the $1050 deal that Defender offered me. They matched that price.

The raymarine stuff has performed well so far.
Chris

 

[Geoff Johnson]

I certainly agree with you about the unfortunate positioning of the instruments. I often find myself shooing people away from the depthsounder. However, when I think about new instruments, the only solution I can think of for the holes is to fill them with new instruments and use a repeater at the helm. Since the holes are so close tothe companionway, I don't quite see how you could put a port there and not have it look funny.

 

[Loren Beach]

I may have mentioned it here before, but I replaced the "basic three" DataMarine round instruments with the similar set (offered at a discount through many retailers) of Raymarine ST60's. They are very easy to read and the bus system lets me switch to true wind speed and direction at will.
I did have to shrink the old holes in the bulkhead at little, but the bezels on the new instruments cover my work -- it was an interesting project, and a bit tedious, but quite satisfying when done.
Loren in PDX
Olson 34 #8

 

[Geoff Johnson]

Loren, did you have to rewire the mast for the anemometer because that could be expensive.

 

[Geoff Nelson]

round peg in a square hole

Loren,

Were the ST60s the square ones? How did that work- just a big bezel to cover the gaps?

Thanks,

G-

 

[Loren Beach]

I did replace the wind instrument wire bundle inside the mast, but this was done while the spar was down anyway for a re-rig. Note that each instrument company will have their own wiring harness, supplied with the instrument. Also, even if you could conjure up a way to reuse the old wires, would you really want to trust corroded 20-year-old wires? There might well be capacitance and resistance issues, as well.
As to re-using the old holes on the cabin bulkhead.... ah yes... that was interesting....

The Datamarines used a 4" circle cutout, as I remember; the Raymarine uses a 3 1/2" circle cutout (only the bezel is square). Ya gotta "shrink" the circle opening.
I had some instrument circle cutouts of FRP panel, laying around the shop, from our prior boat and they were 4". So, after epoxying two of them together to get the needed half inch thickness, I cut out a 3 1/2 " circle from the center of each of those circles. This left me with a ring that I could carefully epoxy into each existing opening in the cabin side. I was fortunate in that the square bezel on the new Raymarine instruments would just (!) cover my work.

Hope this helps you. One of these days I gotta get a digital camera and post a few pics of this stuff...

Best,
Loren in PDX

 

[Geoff Johnson]

One alternative would be a TackTick wireless anenometer, but they are very expensive and I read in the most recent Practical Boat Owner that the sealed battery lasts only 3 to 5 years after which you have to buy a new unit.

 

[Sailsteve]

Autohelm / Raymarine suggestion

Here's an idea ... Last summer my boat was whacked by a mean spirited lighting bolt. It blew up all of my light fixtures, melted wires and (do I need to say this?) fried my older Autohelm ST-50 system electronics (all of them). Because of a screwup my insurance was not in effect so I wasn't covered for any of the damage. I rewired the boat myself and then I did the math. To replace all that I lost with new ST-60 instruments would have cost me somewhere slightly north of three grand. I went to EBAY and discovered that there is always someone selling old, but totally working sailing instruments. I have replaced everything that blew up with the exception of the new chartplotter for about a quarter of what I would have paid for new stuff, and all of it works brilliantly. If you want Datamarine I would expect you could probably do the same thing that I did.

Ya gotta love that EBAY!

Good Luck,

Steve Schwartz
E36-RH Glory Days

 

[escapade]

e-bay blues

You can get some great deals on e-bay. Just be aware of the price you need to pay at the discount house before you start bidding. Last spring I purchased a Standard Horizon VHF radio w/ram mike BRAND NEW from WM for $50-60 dollars LESS than they where selling on e-bay for! Go figure! Some people get caught up in the bidding frenzy and go brain dead. I just wish they would do that when I'm trying to sell. BTW, I have moved my instruments to a pod on the helm & love it. Repaired the old holes in the combing w/epoxy & mounted a binocular holder over the repair to hide it. Worked out real well. With a little creativity you might be able to come up with something similar (sheet/halyard bags, etc.)
Have fun & sail fast
Bud E34 "Escapade"

 

[Geoff Johnson]

I see that Airmar is coming out with a masthead "Ultrasonic Weatherstation" that has no moving parts and built-in compass and gps which can calculate true wind speed and direction. That's the kind of generational advance that could get me to swap my trusty Corinthian.

 

[windjunkee]

I'm also looking to upgrade my wind instruments and will look into the airmar products. We currently have digital windpoint/windspeed, Chartplotter, and speed/depth instruments mounted to the bulkhead to starboard of the companionway.
Last year, I sailed on a J boat that had a separate readout for digital magnetic wind direction. I LOVED that instrument, especially for displaying real-time veer and being able to distinguish between simple oscillations versus actual veer. (I like to sail by feel, but the hairs on the back of my neck don't seem to be able to pick up 10 degree shifts)
Now the question posed to you all (and I'm also making calls on this) is this:
We have the NMEA system set up, but our wind instruments don't seem to pick up any of the information from the GPS chartplotter, thus, our "True" wind will be calculated based on the input from the paddlewheel/speedlog. Would we need to change out the masthead system in order to improve the data stream to accommodate a magnetic wind direction instrument? I've already done some searches on pyacht and, unless the digital magnetic wind direction is part of a multi-pac, I don't see anyone offering that particular display.
Thanks in advance for the input.

Jim McCone
"Voice of Reason" E32-2 Hull #134

 

[Geoff Johnson]

I don't have the expertise to answer your question. As for the Airmar unit, we will have to wait for the manufacturers of the "heads" to catch up with Airmar's technology. My hope is that since Airmar has placed the "brains" in its unit, a company like Garmin will be able to incorporate the new unit into an existing head like its 3000 series with simply a software change. There should be some remarkable changes in the coming year.

 

[Mike.Gritten]

Replacement Instruments

On Papillon, we have just replaced all the old round-faced instruments with a new set of square Navman units. They included Speed, Depth, Wind, and a Repeat for down at the nav table. They are awesome and make me wish I had done this before. We got them on sale at a local chandlers (Steveston Marine in Vancouver) for $1149 CDN (approx $930 US) including all the transducers. To be fair, we did pick up the "In Hull Puck" transducer for the depth sounder for an additional $72 CDN ($58 US) because I didn't want another hole in our boat! BTW, the puck works great, giving readings down to more than 600 feet before it starts to lose the bottom. The PO had installed a new mast head pickup and cable before we purchased the boat 2 years ago, but neglected to give us the instruments themselves. We used the cable he had run to connect our new unit to with no problems whatsever. Wiring was virtually new anyway. The previous instruments had the 4+" round holes cut into the cockpit bulkhead but the Navman units only require a 2" circular hole to mount into. Not being at all proficient with epoxy and fibreglass, we looked for a way to cover the holes (which were almost, but not quite, covered by the new instruments. The solution we came up with was Starboard squares, 1/2" x 4.75" x 4.75" screwed and bonded with 3M 4200 adhesive over the existing holes, drilled out with the 2" openings for the new instruments. Worked great! Looks acceptable, and if I do become more daring with my "glassing" ability in the future, they are relatively easy to remove. I will upload pictures in another post (they are on a laptop at home). We chamfered the edges to give the Starboard a more finished look. I would do it again the same way if I had to do it over. BTW, an added bonus is that the new instrument heads only intrude about 3/4" into the "cabinets" mounted on the inside of the bulkhead giving us some real handy storage space where before the soup-can-sized backs of the old Kenyon heads permitted only minimal storage.

 

[Mike.Gritten]

Here is the photo of my Navman install.