All Eggs ( Nav System ) In One Basket ?

[stevewrye]

Thanks for all the information here, good stuff. I'm the 60 year old and I'm nervous about our future buy of electronic equipment. Our last SV had separate radar and screen, separate AIS and screen and two chart plotters that did talk to each other, one at helm and one at nav station. We liked it a lot but now I'm going crazy trying figure out how to do that anymore. Does Furno still make a screen dedicated to radar or do you have to buy an expensive Furno chart plotter screen for it? We were satisfied with Garmin chart plotters and maps for the pacific crossing last time so I thought the easiest thing would be is to give into the bastards and just get everything from the Garmin company. Two Garmin chart plotters, Garmin radar and Garmin class B AIS. We are using NKE for auto helm,wind and depth. I know I'm not getting the best of some products but Garmin stuff should all talk to each other fairly easily without special nema this and nema that and going into special software which would be a disaster for us. The NKE stuff and the Garmin does not have to talk with each other so I will keep them separate. If it fails it fails, still have a hand held GPS or two, small depth device, paper charts and a sexton. Maybe life would be easier with the hand held, charts and sexton. I just can't convince myself of that as I really enjoyed all the gizmos last time around. But why can't they make it simple as I am simple minded.