Mounting new Garmin 740 chart plotter - 2012

March 2012 - Marina Kona Kai Shelter Island San Diego, CA
Now it is finally time to get into the 21^st century by installing the chart plotter. Now honestly I am not sure why we even need it but we are going to install it any way.

 For instance Debbie would like to take up Celestial Navigation as a hobby this would certainly suffice.

 We have not needed these instruments before and our two friends one on a catch and one on a trawler both have been to Mexico for a cruise on their boats and both used a hand held GPS and both survived just fine.

OK off the soap box. We ponied up the money and bought the stuff.

 Our friends on the catch spent two days in a marina out of three or more months in Mexico and they had two autopilots. One wind vane and one wheel type pilot. Their major upgrade after getting here to the US is a new under deck autopilot. Their choices were water maker or new autopilot and they chose autopilot, so you see how much the AP matters.  Their wheel pilot worked fine until the seas got bigger, then it had problems. That meant they had problems.

 We definitely want an autopilot for cruising. With our boat at 17,000 pounds it takes us out of the wheel pilot weight zone. Now that is our empty boat weight. Plus in heavy weather is when we really need it so out with the wheel pilot. Also under deck is way quieter.

Instrument on far right, just like the GMI 10.

 So the autopilot requires an instrument to make it work (we will mount this in the cockpit combing by the engine controls starboard side 1978 Freeport). Then to really make it work nicely a chart plotter interface is especially nice. Well now that we have an autopilot and chart plotter why not have some wind information and hay we could use depth info for anchoring, you see where we are going with this scenario?

 What we did decide, is for us we value the cockpit space more than we value the chart plotter size. Now having a big "easy to read" chart plotter is way nice. We have also seen on boats like ours where the bent over binnacle guard limits some cockpit movement and the large chart plotter limits the amount of viewable space in the cockpit. It is of our liking that we have less stuff and more room. Not for everyone's taste but that’s how we want it. Some would say there is plenty of room for both and that tired old 65 year old eyes could benefit with a big screen but I guess I’ll just squint if need be. Besides I think it takes the fun out of sailing with all the gadgets running (that we will have) .

 We had a hand held Garmin chart plotter on our Catalina 30. We sometimes would mount it at the binnacle and have it on at night in the harbor. It was just too much like a computer and gave you way too much info. It was like driving the car then. Now we liked shinning the spot light on the buoy and then checking the chart if need be. OK again not for everyone and it all has it’s place. Besides it’s hard to get messed up in San Diego harbor when you have sailed it for years!

 On with the setup.

 We chose the Garmin GPS MAP 740 chart plotter for it’s physical size. It is big enough for us to get all the info we need but small enough for us to still use the binnacle guard as a hand hold without modifying it while maneuvering the cockpit. We were hoping that would be the case. We did do some preliminary try outs with some templates Debbie made but were still not positive.

GMI™ 10 Marine Instrument also shows wind vane 

 We have mounted our GMI™ 10 Marine Instrument at the Nav station for a repeater of sorts.
 The folks at Shelter Island Marine Electronics kept trying to talk us into a big navpod and binnacle re-fit to hold all three instruments and more (GMI 10, AP and chart plotter) but we kept telling them we'd rather not.

 We placed a piece of teak that we can modify to fit for a mounting plate. We tried using the white mounting brackets but they are not going to work for us. Some stainless steel U-type clamps will do the job though.

 We are choosing teak over Starboard because we think it is stronger.
Note:
 Later we switched to starboard.

We are trying different positions for hand grips on stainless steel binnacle guard and for chart plotter viewing.

One reason we chose the Garmin is because the touch screen has no knobs on the side so the screen is bigger. Then of course you have no knobs for use in rough seas though. 

We are leaving the compass in place as back up 😎