Upgrade to raymarine c90 or not?

[wonky]

Morning all, I'm guessing most are out on the water but I've got to fund my hobby today
Just bought new Beneteau Antares 30 (the one at the boat show so I hope you all took care onboard!). Thought I'd specced everyting I wanted when I did the deal but I'm now considering upgrading from the a70 to the c90 raymarine. Mainly because I want to be able to add AIS or maybe even RADAR at a later date but also it looks a whole lot better. Thought it would be fairly cheap to do this but now understand I have to get a new tranducer(?) aswell so it's starting to become expensive.

Any thoughts?

 

[PaulGooch]

Both of those are a bit on the small side for the boat, IMO, particularly if you want to integrate the fishfinder and radar. The A70 will be tiny if you split the screen between the plotter and fishfinder. The C90W would be tolerablesplit between plotter and radar, but pretty small with a three way split to include the fishfinder. If it was me, i would upgrade to a bigger Garmin. I just ditched a new Raymarine C90W, was a pain in the arris and Raymarine support was appalling, for a 10" Garmin, best move i've made with electronics. It's nicely interfaced with VHF, AIS, fishfinder and radar. Highly recommended.

You will need to replace the transducer to change from A series to C series, or to Garmin because the plugs are different, the transducers are actually the same (Airmar). The transducer is not very expensive, but to integrate a fishfinder with the C series, or the Garmin, you also need a separate black box. I decided not to fully integrate the fishfinder with the plotter and fitted a separate Garmin fishfinder. It partially integrates, in as much as it displays digital depth data on the plotter, leaving the screen to display a radar overlay on the plotter under normal conditions, with a 60/40 ish split between plotter and radar in poor visibility.

 

[baldyash]

HI--Great Boat --We have just had ours for a few weeks now after ordering at the LBS in January.We blagged a c90w & so far so good.We have ours on the Crouch nr Burnham. Due to the August weather its only been out twice so far, but had a magic trip home from the Orwell. I think the A70 will be too small --the c90w filling the available space. I hav'nt got radar so I cant comment. It was factory fitted so I didnt have to sort it out. One thing I would say --it would be nice to have a rudder indicator--visable on the screen, as it does have a menu for it.
Did yours have a D6 or Yanmar, as I see Beneteau have changed to Volvo for the Antares 30 now

 

[PaulGooch]

Rudder angle

I fitted an independent rudder indicator to my boat :

http://www.furneauxriddall.com/shop/acatalog/VDO_Trim___Rudder_Angle.html

 

[wonky]

Thank you both, Yes its got the Volvo D6, no idea why they changed. The only negative as far as i can see is the larger throttle on the fly helm which makes it even more difficult to fit my legs under!
I think as i've got to change the transducer anyway I may as well look at changing to the Garmin, to be honest I prefer the look of them. Paul, is your Garmin flush fitting and ready for AIS?

Cheers.

(still at work)

 

[PaulGooch]

Thank you both, Yes its got the Volvo D6, no idea why they changed. The only negative as far as i can see is the larger throttle on the fly helm which makes it even more difficult to fit my legs under!
I think as i've got to change the transducer anyway I may as well look at changing to the Garmin, to be honest I prefer the look of them. Paul, is your Garmin flush fitting and ready for AIS?

Cheers.

(still at work)

Yes, i have the GPSMAP 4010 and it flush fits. It's interfaced with a Comar AIS, which works perfectly. The Garmin has plenty of NMEA ports, which the AIS engine uses one of, very simple to connect. I've used the same AIS engine with a Standard Horizon CP300, a Raymarine C90W and the Garmin, the Garmin has the best implementation of AIS of all three.

I fitted a 2nd VHF antenna, with the AIS engine close to the VHF set. The idea being it acts as a backup antenna for the VHF.

 

[MikeJ42]

I went for the C90W's and they do seem small. You cant really use split screen so I overlay the radar. I did look at bigger Garmins but I just dont like the cartography. I wish I had dug a little deeper and gone for the C120W's.

 

[wonky]

Oh, I can see this getting expensive! I had a little look yesterday and unfortunately there wasn't much on display at any of the swanwick chandlers. Bit criminal really. There was a garmin 750 which although is touch screen I actually really liked the look of, shame they don't do it in a bigger size and there was noone available to tell me if it took ais anyway.
It does irritate me that even staying with raymarine I have to change the transducer.
Garmin 10" is the favourite at the moment just need to see one in the flesh. Might give marin superstore @ port Solent a try....

Cheers all.

 

[PaulGooch]

Oh, I can see this getting expensive! I had a little look yesterday and unfortunately there wasn't much on display at any of the swanwick chandlers. Bit criminal really. There was a garmin 750 which although is touch screen I actually really liked the look of, shame they don't do it in a bigger size and there was noone available to tell me if it took ais anyway.
It does irritate me that even staying with raymarine I have to change the transducer.
Garmin 10" is the favourite at the moment just need to see one in the flesh. Might give marin superstore @ port Solent a try....

Cheers all.

Forget the 750s, unsuitable for your boat. It is too small and has no network capabilities. If you want touch screen Garmin, they do a 8" and a 12", expensive though.

A Garmin GPSMAP 4010 will set you back about £1600, you could consider keeping the A70 as a separate fishfinder and backup plotter, an NMEA feed to the Garmin would allow a digital depth display on the Garmin screen.

Another consideration if the price of additional equipment, like radar. The Raymarine radome is more money than a Garmin one, there is a substantial difference in price on the HD radomes. You also need to spend at least £100 on additional cables/hardware to connect the Raymarine radome. If you were to use a Raymarine radome and the black box fishfinder, you also need a network hub, at about £240 (or you could use a 100mbit PC network hub/switch, with a 12v power input).

I bought a Garmin plotter and it had everything i needed, including an external GPS antenna, rather than the flaky internal Raymarine one. It had more cables than i needed, including a NMEA 2000 network (about £140 extra with Raymarine). There are also three network ports, allowing connection of the radome, the black box fishfinder and a spare that could possibly be used for a PC connection. The Radome also came with everything i needed.