I had the wind instrument on the last
boat. It was totally solar powered. The display
head was under a
Bimini and in 3 years it never failed to show a full power level. You can use the supplied bracket to allow you to remove the display
head and take it with you. The problem with it is it is also stealable. You can hard wire it as well if you like but I never saw the need.
They do use a very small amount of power. It's the only reason they even
work. The units have no serviceable
parts and are factory sealed. The unit I had worked for 3 years and never had a battery issue. You can't change the battery. I believe they use silver halide
batteries. They are a great battery but they don't put out a lot of power but do have an exceptionally long duty cycle. Getting the power use low enough really is the only reason they
work. You just couldn't make these types of instruments if they didn't.
For the Wind Instrument you bolt a cup to the top of the masthead and then the instrument is attached with 3 screws so that you can remove if need be. The stalk is carbon fiber wrapped.
You do a
training session on the ground with all the devices close and turn them on and they find each other. It's a wireless
network and communicate with each other. Once the unit is attached to the
mast head you just turn the display head on and off. I found I could walk down the
dock with the display in my hands 70 feet or more and still read the display.
The units are not
cheap by any means but the cost of
installation is almost nothing. The
hull transducers need 12 volt power but no signal wires. they also have a
NMEA device that can be used to connect a
GPS antenna and then also supply out pout for a PC as well as do true wind computations. The devices integrate as you add them. They know what can be done with the various signals.
If you consider the problems you have with wires it's not a bad way to go. I avoided a
mast unstepping that would have been required to install the conventional units. That would have cost more
money than the Tacktick. Ocean
Equipment out of
California is the distributor. The parent company is British. I had some initial warranty issues and they were quite generous in how they handled it. Normal warranty I think was far longer than you get from
Raymarine.
The stuff does work.