aod
New member
As always Kim that's a fair response to the post Hey Kim! have you seen the post by Anatoly.
Possibly in the poor angry blokes defence and not really understanding what he's on about I felt I ought to point out my own experiences with Ray Marine which may or may not be related to his issues.
I think Ray Marine after sales is about as good as it gets but there again it has to be.
One speaks as one finds and I have to have my Ray Marine instruments repaired (one or more of the seven in the cockpit) at least twice a year. I have a mixture of the older ST50 stuff and the much newer ST60 stuff. The compass gets fixed then the wind goes wrong, the wind gets fixed and the multi goes wrong!
Every single problem I have is with water ingress. I have of course taken all reasonable steps to seal the units myself like taping around the seams, covering the screw holes etc but non of it really works.
I bombed out on this years AZAB as a single handed entry because the ST4000+ control head corroded. It had been tested two weeks prior to the event and given a clean bill of health and whilst I accept that it was pretty wet and windy early June, these instruments should if nothing else be waterproof and they are simply not. Indeed they are not even weather proof!
More fool me for not taking a backup control unit but there again, even the thought of having to take backup units to cover corrosion due to water ingress on a sailing yacht is a joke.
If Ray Marine know they have problems with water ingress (as they clearly do) what on earth prevents them from sealing the PCBs with a few microns of clear plastic spray on coating? Absolutely nothing, unless you factor in that after sales service and spares (like Volvo engines) forms an intergral and essential part of the profit segment of their business case.
Hence excellent after sales!
In other words they build to fail in order to profit, and whilst that very common business strategy is not quite as critical when considering your TV it is on a yachts instrumentation purely due to the danger imposed when sailing blind.
A few years ago I sent every one of my seven ST50s to Ray Marine for checking and specificaly asked them to seal the units to prevent water ingress. Two weeks later I sailed over for Cork week on a bumpy wet day and every single instrument other than the Garmin GPS failed due to water ingress. Sure enough when they dried a few hours later they came on again but I knew................you know, and ............................Ray Marine know...................... that the PCBs would all subsiquently corrode warranting significant expenditure on new PCBs which in time would also fail. They did fail and they were replaced and they failed again...................all for the same reason 'Corrosion due to Water Ingress'
I simply haven't heard the same common complaint about any other manufacturers yacht instruments regardless of purchase price.
Personaly I would need some pretty potent persuasion before I ever bought another Ray Marine product and as they fail I will replace them with new units produced by a different manufacturer.
Funnily enough during this last Fastnet the wind has failed again but rather than go for the short terms cheaper option of replacing the PCB (for the fourth time) I will spend a little extra and buy a quality instrument that affords a greater reliability and longevity.
That purchase will certainly not be a Ray Marine product.
Also later this year I am project managing the fitting out of a brand new yacht and for all the above reasons I have already persuaded the owner to steer well clear of Ray Marine products. These days many companies opt for short term profitability because it pleases their share holders but in the longer term their business suffers and they go insolvent before being bought out by a new company who re-badges the old products, opts for the same marketing strategy, and follows the same pattern.
Into the hat goes Raytheon............abracadabra.................and Hey Presto we have.............................Ray Marine!
Fabulous re-branding...................fabulous marketing....................same crap product!
Richard
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Possibly in the poor angry blokes defence and not really understanding what he's on about I felt I ought to point out my own experiences with Ray Marine which may or may not be related to his issues.
I think Ray Marine after sales is about as good as it gets but there again it has to be.
One speaks as one finds and I have to have my Ray Marine instruments repaired (one or more of the seven in the cockpit) at least twice a year. I have a mixture of the older ST50 stuff and the much newer ST60 stuff. The compass gets fixed then the wind goes wrong, the wind gets fixed and the multi goes wrong!
Every single problem I have is with water ingress. I have of course taken all reasonable steps to seal the units myself like taping around the seams, covering the screw holes etc but non of it really works.
I bombed out on this years AZAB as a single handed entry because the ST4000+ control head corroded. It had been tested two weeks prior to the event and given a clean bill of health and whilst I accept that it was pretty wet and windy early June, these instruments should if nothing else be waterproof and they are simply not. Indeed they are not even weather proof!
More fool me for not taking a backup control unit but there again, even the thought of having to take backup units to cover corrosion due to water ingress on a sailing yacht is a joke.
If Ray Marine know they have problems with water ingress (as they clearly do) what on earth prevents them from sealing the PCBs with a few microns of clear plastic spray on coating? Absolutely nothing, unless you factor in that after sales service and spares (like Volvo engines) forms an intergral and essential part of the profit segment of their business case.
Hence excellent after sales!
In other words they build to fail in order to profit, and whilst that very common business strategy is not quite as critical when considering your TV it is on a yachts instrumentation purely due to the danger imposed when sailing blind.
A few years ago I sent every one of my seven ST50s to Ray Marine for checking and specificaly asked them to seal the units to prevent water ingress. Two weeks later I sailed over for Cork week on a bumpy wet day and every single instrument other than the Garmin GPS failed due to water ingress. Sure enough when they dried a few hours later they came on again but I knew................you know, and ............................Ray Marine know...................... that the PCBs would all subsiquently corrode warranting significant expenditure on new PCBs which in time would also fail. They did fail and they were replaced and they failed again...................all for the same reason 'Corrosion due to Water Ingress'
I simply haven't heard the same common complaint about any other manufacturers yacht instruments regardless of purchase price.
Personaly I would need some pretty potent persuasion before I ever bought another Ray Marine product and as they fail I will replace them with new units produced by a different manufacturer.
Funnily enough during this last Fastnet the wind has failed again but rather than go for the short terms cheaper option of replacing the PCB (for the fourth time) I will spend a little extra and buy a quality instrument that affords a greater reliability and longevity.
That purchase will certainly not be a Ray Marine product.
Also later this year I am project managing the fitting out of a brand new yacht and for all the above reasons I have already persuaded the owner to steer well clear of Ray Marine products. These days many companies opt for short term profitability because it pleases their share holders but in the longer term their business suffers and they go insolvent before being bought out by a new company who re-badges the old products, opts for the same marketing strategy, and follows the same pattern.
Into the hat goes Raytheon............abracadabra.................and Hey Presto we have.............................Ray Marine!
Fabulous re-branding...................fabulous marketing....................same crap product!
Richard
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