Bluewater NAV and course Plotting systems

[SubSea]

Advice from veteran Yachtsman please: i am an ex SAT Diver very experienced in marine matters motor-vessels and seamanship, but new to Sailing and Wind and certainly no IT whizzo. In terms of ease and simplicity of use , ease of troubleshooting, re NAV and course Plotting.Which system should I go for coupled to AIS, Radar and Two separate Auto-Pilots: B&G, FURUNO, RAYMARINE, SIMRAD, or GARMIN ? With emphasis on ease of use, reliability, ease of trouble-shooting and making Bluewater NAV and associated software as simple as possible ? Welcome members impartial views based upon hard experience, as would to get it right first time around on a monohull 57 footer. Thanks a lot.

[tkeithlu]

Welcome to the forum, SubSea.

There are too many variables there for me to respond to. In the general case, I and many others on the forum like Garmin equipment, but I've got OpenCPN, Furuno, Simrad, and a few others on my panel.

At the broader level, I am an advocate of keeping the nav elements separate rather than part of an integrated glass cockpit, due to redundancy issues and the risk of the entire system going down in integrated set ups. I'm also an advocate for paper charts, updated with location every half hour, as a Plan B.

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by SubSea

Which system should I go for coupled to AIS, Radar and Two separate Auto-Pilots: B&G, FURUNO, RAYMARINE, SIMRAD, or GARMIN ? With emphasis on ease of use, reliability, ease of trouble-shooting and making Bluewater NAV and associated software as simple as possible ?

Do you mean you already have AIS, radar, and two separate autopilots? If so, which brand... and that might lead to selecting a plotter of the same brand.

If not... Furuno is the brand I have most/longest experience with, and I liked it.

I had an older, smaller Raymarine system before that. OK, but that was so long ago and the suite wasn't extensive... so can't really say much one way or the other about their newer stuff.

Now I've inherited a partial Garmin system (MFD, radar, sonar) with an older Raymarine AP; Garmin is OK, and the AP works... but I'll probably build out the rest of our system with Furuno anyway... replacing Garmin and Ray stuff only if they break. Not a recommendation, just an observation.

No experience with B&G or Simrad.

You may find many similar responses: familiarity with only one or maybe two brands...

FWIW, I also use TimeZero on a laptop for planning and track capture, and AquaMap and occasionally iSailor on tablets on the bridge for redundancy and back-up.

-Chris