Tell Me About Garmin's Marine Line

[goboatingnow]

[Thinking out loud here. With Garmins chart-plotter, is it possible to interface it with the autopilot and the autopilot actually runs the course plotted by the chart-plotter and in essence I only need to trim sails? Can I go one step further and automate an electric winch? And with my Garmin wind sensor I can trigger the winch to ease off when the wind picks up past a preset threshold. Is a configuration like this possible less than a small fortune?

If that works, then I could take a three hour nap while the boat sails over night and use the radar to trigger an alarm when any objects come into range.

Buy virtual skipper never leave your armchair take 10 hour Naps if you want ps you dont need ais in this setup your armchair is unlikely to collide with anything = bonus
Dave

[Surveyor]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

I ambuying a new gadget soon as I get to the Caribbean (would be nice to buy it here before I go, but the price difference is DOUBLE!)

I'm only buying one bit.

What do you reckon its gunna be AIS or Radar?



Mark

Radar!

[sabray]

Originally Posted by Surveyor

Radar!

No way marks sailing a production boat with some cheap anchor and no real charts so he will continue on with that streak of controversial choices and get AIS

[JiffyLube]

When we get fog on the west coast, radar is the tool of choice. Radar sees not only ships and boats large enough to make a target, it sees land, buoys, oil derriks, jetties, and in some cases heavy rain. AIS only shows ships and boats that are using AIS, so I'll keep my 4K radar.

[nhschneider]

At the beginning of summer, I installed a Garmin 6208 chart plotter with Garmin's HD 18 radar. I also added the AIS that transmits and Garmin's sailing instruments. The installation, though somewhat time-consuming, was straight-forward enough and everything worked right out of the box - including the interface with my 15-year old autopilot.

Because of my autopilot's age, I seriously considered replacing it as well but upon looking at the Garmin autopilot offering carefully, I decided that their product is much better suited to power boats. The dealer with whom I was working on this project with agreed.

Fair winds and calm seas.

[goboatingnow]

Garmin now have a sailboat autopilot quite good too it seems

Dave