Cockpit instrumentation on a 40ft cruising yacht?

Well if you are 120km north of Perth you must be on a similar latitude as Durban where my boat is as just sail due west and you should get to Durban OK. We will make you most welcome at the Royal Natal Yacht club.

http://rnyc.org.za/

At the mo I am at home in Johannesburg about 15km south of the airport.

I have often joked to William_H who lives in fremantle, and is a member of East fremantle yacht club, to give me a wave across the Indian Ocean.

Our last trip into the wilds of Africa.

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?456461-Boating-trip-report&p=5699456#post5699456
 
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I appreciate I have a tiller steered yacht, but even on a wheel steered yacht I see no value of having a rudder indicator.
  • Essentials are speed, depth, and heading. SOG and COG can be had from any GPS system, with heading and SOW being useful, but less so.
  • Next essential is a chart plotter. This can also have a data view to give time, distance to waypoint and bearing to waypoint. I would integrate the AIS view into the chart plotter rather than having a separate device (although if you want redundancy, you could have both).
  • Next is a wind instrument, although I prefer to look at the tell tales - with a small torch if it's dark.
  • Rev counter is useful, although I just listen to the tone of the engine.
  • Engine water temp and Engine oil pressure are luxuries. Personally I would just go for a light and loud buzzer which are activated if temp / pressure is outside of permissible thresholds. The lights are small and will consume minimal space. However, I would go for these instruments if I had a Mobo.


Looks like I'm pretty minimalistic :)
 
RobF said:
even on a wheel steered yacht I see no value of having a rudder indicator.
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I think the OP is having hydraulic steering. With hydraulics you can't mark a king spoke on the wheel, so an indicator is useful to know where the rudder is when manoeuvring.

Pete
 
RobF said:
I appreciate I have a tiller steered yacht, but even on a wheel steered yacht I see no value of having a rudder indicator.
  • Essentials are speed, depth, and heading. SOG and COG can be had from any GPS system, with heading and SOW being useful, but less so.
  • Next essential is a chart plotter. This can also have a data view to give time, distance to waypoint and bearing to waypoint. I would integrate the AIS view into the chart plotter rather than having a separate device (although if you want redundancy, you could have both).
  • Next is a wind instrument, although I prefer to look at the tell tales - with a small torch if it's dark.
  • Rev counter is useful, although I just listen to the tone of the engine.
  • Engine water temp and Engine oil pressure are luxuries. Personally I would just go for a light and loud buzzer which are activated if temp / pressure is outside of permissible thresholds. The lights are small and will consume minimal space. However, I would go for these instruments if I had a Mobo.


Looks like I'm pretty minimalistic :)
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More instruments might give the illusion of safety but in reality don't and just make the wiring and maintenance more complex. Essentials only: Direction, Speed, Depth and a Chartplotter will show whatever else.
 
I have friends have just completed a 20,000nm voyage to South Georgia via all sorts of amazing places and all they had was a compass at the wheel. what did they do wrong?
 
Well I can outdo that!

My BIL was on Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) when a single handler brought his yacht in with nothing better than a school atlas to to navigate by AND

A builder of a newly built yacht and crew took off from New Zealand with no navigation equipment. Their plan was to sail North for 5 days and turn left and head for Australia (they ended up on Middleton Reef)

The Polynesians didn't need sophisticated navigational instruments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation

Clive
 
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Rogershaw said:
I note you have sail high and low with motor high and low. I assume low id deck level nav lights and sail high is tricolour but what is motor high ?
I also have an anchor light on or with day light sensor for dusk to dawn lighting.
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"Motor high" is the masthead all-round white plus the bow bicolour. We're under 12m so that's a legal combination for us. I tend not to use it much, but the lights were already there so I thought I might as well allow the possibility. Could be handy if the stern light or steaming light were to conk out.

My anchor light is attached to the anchor ball, plugs into the foredeck socket, and has a daylight sensor like yours. Legally, I could just turn the knob to light up the all-round white at the top of the mast, but I quite deliberately didn't label this as "Anchor" on the dial because I disapprove of masthead anchor lights.

Pete
 
coopec said:
What you say is absolutely true about "give some serious thought to how you will use the boat". The boat I'm building is a Cruising Boat not a coastal cruiser [...]
I wouldn't store electronic gear on deck because it wouldn't last a day (and even less in Africa) before it was knocked off.
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Point taken that our sailing is different and so the instrument arrangements will differ too. And you're right that I don't have to worry much about my instruments being stolen from the cockpit, and not only because they're so old that the manufacturer laughed at my dad last week when he asked about getting the plotter repaired :). We do have a full cover for the binnacle, originally because it leaked rainwater freely into the engine bay until I rebuilt it, but now it protects the nice leather I put on the wheel and also keeps things like the VHF remote out of sight. But if someone wanted to take that stuff, there isn't really anything stopping them (except that unsticking the sikaflex is a pain in the arse!).

One idea that occurs to me if theft is a concern - there's a boat called Morgan's Cloud which has all the instruments in two pods or boxes in the cockpit:

JHH5_102639.jpg
JHH5_102632.jpg
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JHHGH1_98944.jpg


Perhaps you could build similar boxes, with protective "lids" that clamp over the front with sturdy latches (Protex make some good kit) that can take a padlock? I'm imagining aluminium pods welded to an aluminium boat, but obviously they could be any material.

Just out of curiosity, what are your plans for navigation? Going with the theme of avoiding expensive "yotty" kit, a PC with OpenCPN would be my guess?

Pete
 
"Just out of curiosity, what are your plans for navigation? Going with the theme of avoiding expensive "yotty" kit, a PC with OpenCPN would be my guess?"

I look back to the days of the demise of typewriters and they were replaced by a thing called a "Word Processor". Then they decided a personal computer (with the right software) could do the job.

I wonder whether a laptop with the right software could do the job just as well as dedicated navigation units? For an integrated system the laptop would need to have a number of USB ports to take readings from the log, wind direction, wind speed etc. Yes I would certainly be looking at a laptop with suitable software for navigation.

No-one in-the-know would take a second look at my depth-sounder so I'm not worried about that. I'm not worried about instruments in the binnacle because that would be sikaflexed to the deck. I would worry about leaving a laptop on deck but maybe I worry too much because my D-I-L found one on the rubbish dump the other day in working order.

Morgan's Cloud is a nice looking yacht too.

Clive
 
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A PC (laptop or otherwise) is a far better navigation platform than the average chart plotter if you use good (usually paid for) software. You don't need multiple USB inputs for whatever instruments you have, you just fit a multiplexer with a USB out port which then talks to the computer. However for your plans it seems a simple USB GPS stick would suffice.
 
prv said:
I think the OP is having hydraulic steering. With hydraulics you can't mark a king spoke on the wheel, so an indicator is useful to know where the rudder is when manoeuvring.

Pete
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I don't know what Clive has decided on yet, he rather liked your conduit and wire method.

You are correct with some types of hydraulic steering that you cannot rely on the position if the wheel to indicate the rudder position like mine with twin wheels and hydraulic driven autopilot. But id you only have one wheel and a mechanical autopilot drive you don't need the pilot operated check valves, so in that arragment you do get feel on the steering and with the exception of the possibility of a little hydraulic slip the wheel ond rudder are very closely aligned.
 
Roger

I have decide to use conduit/cable and I'm sure that's what PRV has.

Maybe everyone knows of this site already but I have just discovered it. I think it would be good in the planning stages of a voyage?
http://map.openseamap.org/

Yes Roger it is nice to live close to the sea. I used to take my little Maltese Terrier for a run along the beach everyday but sadly he passed on a couple of years ago. There's a five meter swell today so there is white water all over the reef.

Clive
 
bitbaltic said:
A PC (laptop or otherwise) is a far better navigation platform than the average chart plotter if you use good (usually paid for) software. You don't need multiple USB inputs for whatever instruments you have, you just fit a multiplexer with a USB out port which then talks to the computer. However for your plans it seems a simple USB GPS stick would suffice.
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Thanks for your advice. It just confirms what I was thinking but I hadn't considered a multiplexer.

Clive
 
coopec said:
Thanks for your advice. It just confirms what I was thinking but I hadn't considered a multiplexer.

Clive
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Clive

This is the type of PC I fitted powered direct from boat 12DC supply.

http://www.mini-box.com/CarPC-M350-Asus-N3150I-C-ITX-M3-ATX-HV?sc=8&category=1543

I USB GPS and rs232 to USB converters for AIS, instrument and VHF radio inputs.

It also has wifi but I only use that for my 3G router/modem.

Multiplexing was done with 2 4to1 usb hubs and NavmonPC driving OpenCPN but it could be done with just OpenCPN.
 
coopec said:
I wonder whether a laptop with the right software could do the job just as well as dedicated navigation units?
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Certainly could. A little less stylish and involving a bit more fiddling to put together what you need rather than just opening a shiny box - but at a tiny fraction of the cost. I believe OpenCPN can even display images from some radars now.

coopec said:
I would worry about leaving a laptop on deck
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A laptop wouldn't be suitable on deck anyway - far too vulnerable to water, not physically robust, and the screen probably won't be readable in bright sunlight.

The basic option would be a laptop at a navigation station in the cabin, or better a small 12v PC (often sold as car or industrial units) built into the boat with a screen (or perhaps multiple screens) where you need them. You can get waterproof ruggedised daylight-readable screens for permanent cockpit mounting; the price does start to increase at that point, but still way less than the equivalent sized plotter.

Pete
 
Rogershaw said:
with the exception of the possibility of a little hydraulic slip the wheel ond rudder are very closely aligned.
Click to expand...

But isn't the hydraulic slip the problem? How long does it take before the spoke you marked as the centre is no longer the centre?

coopec said:
I have decide to use conduit/cable
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Ok, good choice - but then why the rudder indicator? In the spirit of simple, reliable, cheap, a wrap of tape around the central spoke surely beats an electric sensor and dial hands-down?

The fancy version is the strip of dark-blue leather sewn onto my wheel in the photo earlier in the thread, but PVC tape works just as well. A turk's-head knot in small cordage is traditional. Either one can be either on the rim of the wheel or a spoke.

coopec said:
Maybe everyone knows of this site already but I have just discovered it. I think it would be good in the planning stages of a voyage?
http://map.openseamap.org/
Click to expand...

I know of it, but last time I looked it was still pretty underwhelming. Even in somewhere as first-world as the Channel Islands it shows practically no maritime data - no depths, no rocks, just a handful of the larger buoys. Surely in your intended cruising areas it's just going to be blank as there's nobody to collect the data?

http://webapp.navionics.com is much more useful.

Pete
 
"with a screen (or perhaps multiple screens) where you need them."


Yes, that makes real sense. What about mounting them on the Whitlock steering pedestal? I had intended mounting a compass there but maybe I should go the way Roger has with an electronic compass?

Clive
 
prv said:
But isn't the hydraulic slip the problem? How long does it take before the spoke you marked as the centre is no longer the centre?

Pete
Click to expand...

Yes but with the simple single wheel system the slip will be small and of cause in both directions as you steer so would to an extent cancel out providing the cylinders and pump is in good condition.
 
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