Nav Systems - Who's worth the money?

I just did the same thing on a 100' boat - Used all Raymarine products because we had some existing Raymarine equipment. Put in E-120's top and bottom with DSM300, X-SOL autopilot, RL80s as secondary radar screens.

Did not realize that Raymarine was entering bankruptcy. They have been bought by FLIR now, but dealing with them over the last year has been a nightmare. They are backordered on everything. We spent months waiting for some pieces of the puzzle. No distributor could get their hands on key items.

I don't know what their financial situation is moving forward, but you may want to go with a strong company that can offer support (I assume Garmin).

I'm joining the folks from Raymarine & FLIR for a cruise Wednesday night, October 26th, just before opening day of FLIBS 2010. I'll post a follow up on their status after the show.

Very good navigation electronics.

http://www.bandg.com/

Just finished a Raymarine upgrade, E140wide touch-screen at the lower station and twin E90wide's on the bridge,4Kw Radome radar,DSM 30 sounder module,ST70 autopilot control head with X30 corepack and Type 2 steering pump. I used Seatalk-NG for the autopilot interface and SeatalkHS for everything else.Everything worked with no problems,love it . Autopilot commissioning took about 10 minutes dockside and less than an hour during the seatrial.I used the virtual rudder reference and it worked fine,only 8 turns on auto and it signaled a pass. I also like the Furuno NAVNET 3D with the "time zero" redraw. Garmin also in a big seller where I work,lots of good feedback with Garmins ease of use. Northstar,I've been sent to a blank page from the index in their manual too many times to recommend them.

Love Garmin GPS, but for a clean AIO I'd have to go with Furuno Navnet. Only problem I've run into with them is the limited number of waypoints per route. Especially like their radar. Personally I don't like simrad except for AP. BTW, your second station will be a monitor.

We have used Raymarine in most of our boats for years and is now installing it in the new D54. This system has two Glass Bridge 17" monitors and a lot of "boxes" connecting all of it. We will soon see if it works...

I also agree with Pascal that I almost never (except for long legs at sea) use the GPS waypoints for the autopilot other than put the heading to them manually.

I agree the Garmin stuff works ok, once you install the software upgrades. Otherwise it is slower then molasses.

Furuno navnet is the way to go IMO. It is a truely set it up and use it machine. That with a Simrad AP, or a Furuno AP.

I like having sounder data and stuff displayed on the same screen in a data box, because you don't have to scan all over the dash to find it in inclement weather you can focus your eyes up and down quicker.

As for the Raymarine, I have run it extensively the E series. And, I mean extensively. It always has error messages and little issues each day. You always have to go into menu's and change stuff from time to time. The black boxes are quirky. On one boat if the breaker to the sounder box is left on for more then a day, it starts locking up even though the light is showing green on the box and etc. It does work and it works fairly well, but not without getting at least one annoying error message each day.........such as maximum number of points achieved. Every boat with E series that I've run, if you run the boat for 24 hours the raymarines are going to have at least 1 error message. Sometimes you even have to shut them down and reboot them.

The pleasure of an integrated system is that you can get it all in one place, i.e. with a small boat with a small unit you can bring your route onto your radar screen using the whole screen for radar when the fog sets in. It's also convenient to look to one screen for most of your data. That said redundancy is key on any boat. Don't care if a boat has the best money can buy; I still like to have my little Garmin up there as well. I also like to have a seperate depth finder as well. That way when (not if) the main unit dumps you've still got what you need. I've found that my little Garmin (176C) gives me more pertinent info than any other unit regardless of cost and repeats faster than any others. Mine repeats within 3 seconds where many (including the Navnets and the E-series Rays) seem to take up to 6 seconds.

I agree the Raymarine "takeover" has not been seamless, but my understanding is that it's going to get better fairly soon. I still like Raymarine from the point of view of an integrated system... Garmin still seems slightly less .. hmmm... smooth in terms of basic use. It's interesting to hear about other systems on here, since a lot of great lakes cruising boats don't use much more than a plotter.

One observation is that with any system, the installation is very significant ... therefore dollars saved on the Garmin over the Furuno are not as significant as they may seem once installation is considered.

I have the Furuno NN3D as my primary display and a Garmin 3210 as the secondary on the helm. I prefer the XM weather and radio on the Garmin over the Sirius weather on the Furuno.

The Furuno dual range radar is very nice as you can split the screen and set one to a range of 1/16 mile and the other at a mile or so.

The Furuno is my recommendation with Garmin second.

I went with a pair of Garmin 5212's almost 3 years ago when they first came out as well as the garmin radar and a pair of GMI 10's. can'r beat their chartplotters. radar is so so but frankly, for the fishing I do in the GOM, works great. I have the XM weather so my radar is for other boats and birds. My GMI 10's give me big readouts and the whole system is linked via 2000. happy as a clam with my system. and why are clams happy? I always wondered. bearded clams I can understand but regular clams???

IMHO, go for the Furuno NavNet 3D package, with UHD radar. Add a FLIR & it's pretty complete.

Had this factory installed on my new boat, a Pershing 80.

nice outfit but I would think since the OP has a 1985 50' CC, not a new Pershing 80 like you, the 12k Flir and UHD radar MAY be a bit overkill in price for him since his grandpa was stroking the check.

I think your equipment cost is greater than the value of his boat

my apologies ... i wasn't trying to boast ...

i was merely giving an opinion on equipment. nothing more.

My last boat had a relatively new SIMRAD system installed and I liked it. I could overlay the radar image on the GPS/Plotter screen. That was nice when out in a heavy fog and at night.

The graphics on the SIMRAD CA44(?) display were better than the Raymarine C120W that I have now. They were easier to read in sunlight as well.