Go with the Garmin
I second the Garmin. Just got back from a trip from San Francisco to Catalina and back, and the Garmin 3206 with 18" HD Raydome came in very handy. Excellent/intuative user interface. It was neat to see the radar overlay on the chart--the GPS lags a bit behind the radar return, and so going in and out of anchorages at night and in the fog the radar was a big help.
Johnson Hicks, a local electronics dealer, is selling the 3206 for $850 right now as advertised in Latitude 38. The Raydome is about the same, so for less than $2K you get a nice package. When I was looking at getting radar without a plotter, the Furuno with a 16" screen was $1300, so it made sense to go the Garmin route.
For another $400 you can get an AIS receiver that will plot ships on the screen, which gives you even more information.
I really envy you Southern California sailors having the Channel Islands nearby--part of the newest version of my retirement plan is to have a boat in Ventura. It'd be really easy to spend weeks at a time out there, heading back to the mainland every so often for provisions, etc.