I'm not terribly experienced, so I'd love any insight people care to offer on a planned update to my
new boat. It's a 1990 29 foot
express cruiser that I will mostly use as a floating cottage. I am hoping to take some trips across Lake Michigan, but I probably won't travel much further than 100 miles or so in any
single trip, and likely substantially less most of the time. I might drop a line here or there and do some trolling, but only when the mood strikes me. I'm not much of a fisherman. The
boat seems well equipped - or at least it was when it was new. It currently has:
Garmin GPSmap 230
Apelco 560
fishfinder
JRC 3000 4kw
radar
ST 5000+
autopilot
Everything seems to
work reasonably well as far as I've been able to test. I'm just not a fan of the low detail maps and interface on the
GPS. It seems like fishfinders have improved a lot as well in the last 20 years, so I'm thinking a
GPS combo unit might be nice. I've budgeted about $1000 to put toward
electronics. My short list includes the
Simrad go7 and the Lowrance Elite 7 ti, both with Totalscan transducers. Any others I should consider? Here are my thoughts on the two units:
Simrad go 7 - A bit cheaper and maybe a better user interface, but only supports
NMEA 2000 so I couldn't integrate it with my
current autopilot or
radar.
Lowrance Elite 7 ti - Doesn't look like the interface is as polished, but does have an
NMEA 0183 port so I could integrate it.
What would you choose if you were me? Is the autopilot much more useful when fed waypoints from the
chartplotter?
Also, I'm curious about how to best mount the
transducer. My
current one is through
hull. It looks like the totalscan unit mounts to the transom. For a twin
engine boat like mine is it best to mount between the engines or is there a better spot? Will this unit
work well on Lake Michigan?