Electronics

All the electronic equipment on board was either not working or so out-dated to be worthless, with one exception. The VDO wind speed and direction meter had not worked for years. The masthead wand and cabling were missing, along with the VHFaerial and cabling. The Sumlog SL turned on but the paddle wheel was broken. The Hummingbird Dimension 3 Sonar 600 had a large area of the screen that was unreadable. There was a NASA Video Navtex and a Sailor VHF C402 in the cabin that did not work either. The only functioning piece of electronic equipment that fired up and worked was a Garmin GPS 128.

After extensive research and past experience, a full suite of Garmin equipment was selected. The Internet was scoured to find the best value and MES Ltd proved to be approximately 10% cheaper across the range we purchased than any other supplier.

We purchased a GPSMAP750S chartplotter with a 50/200kHz depth transducer, two GMI20 instruments displays with a GWS wind sensor and an Airtronics DST800 transducer, a VHF200i radio and GHS second station handset kit, a GMR 18 4KW 18 inch Radome and later on an AIS 600 transponder was added to the NMEA 2000 network.

The old equipment was removed from the yacht and the new equipment was slowly installed. A new fascia for the cockpit was commissioned from 10mm acrylic and the instrument displays were flush mounted on them. "Forever" was fitted with an NMEA 2000 network and all the Garmin equipment was then interconnected. Two 4 inch Fusion waterproof speakers for the stereo system, a Sony CDMX30 Marine, were also mounted on this new fascia. The stereo was mounted in the cabin with two other speakers there. This unit we sourced in the US and had a remote control so it was easy to operate from the cockpit