Outfitting - Chartplotter

You probably figured out already from the autopilot post that we're pretty much doing all Raymarine, all the time on this boat. The chartplotter and radar are no exceptions; we went with the Raymarine C80 plotter and 2Kw radome combination, with the Raystar 125 GPS antenna for GPS integration.

Installation of the chartplotter component was a breeze. I went against conventional wisdom and installed it on the cabin-top beneath the dodger rather than at the helm station, based partly on a desire to have it relatively central to the batteries and subordinate components and partly on my reading of some of the design philosophies espoused by Beth Leonard and Evans Starzinger. We don't have a hard dodger, of course, but it is notably less fatiguing to keep watch under our dodger instead of out in the weather at the helm. Also, the distance from wheel to cabin-top is sufficiently short that the plotter can still be read from the helm position. Due to the integration of autopilot and plotter, you can effectively steer the boat from the protection of the dodger simply by inputting waypoint orders right on the chart.

For ease of use, then, I mounted the plotter on a "lazy susan" type of arrangement screwed into an empty winch hardpoint on the cabin top, so it can be swiveled to face either the helm, or someone sitting under the protection of the dodger. Originally I made this out of plywood until we decided that it would work out alright, and since have replaced it with sturdier starboard. I'll also thru-bolt rather than screw it down; didn't have time last weekend but it was on my list and I'll definitely do so before we risk the swells in the Strait.

I punched a hole in the cabintop just forward of the mount and ran all the necessary cabling down through that. Although it's under the dodger and out of the weather, I'll probably seal it somehow before we leave. I had no trouble at all tying in to the existing SeaTalk data network already running with the autopilot and depth-sounder. I did not, however, like the odd little cable connectors Raymarine supplied for the raw wire ends... they are difficult to use and strike me as unreliable. I'll probably go back and crimp everything off properly with heat-shrink butt connectors at some point.

We mounted the mushroom-shaped GPS antenna at the port grab rail just forward of the dodger. It's unlikely to get stepped on there, it's close to the plotter for a short wire run, and it's somewhat protected by the dodger. Initially we just strapped it to the rail, again making sure that it would work properly before making a more permanent fixture, but have since mounted it on a short post glued to the deck and further strapped to the rail. That's actually not all that permanent either; I guess I am still considering moving it either under the dodger or up onto the frame somehow.

Of course the first run out after we installed the chartplotter, we ran into heavy fog almost all the way up and back to Port Townsend. Now that we have completed the radar installation, I'm sure we'll never see another whisp. Nonetheless, the plotter was very useful keeping us on course and out of trouble in the weather, and the autopilot integration was terrific; people often complain that autopilots lead to people booming around at full speed not paying any attention to where they are going, but we found that it actually gave us a lot more freedom to keep a good watch, as we had to pay less attention to steering and navigating.