What wind instrument to suit future upgrade?

[danstanford]

Hopefully that title wasn't too vague, but I need to upgrade my wind instrument from a rotovecta headed ST40 unit with a connection to a C80 plotter. I want to upgrade the wind instrument to something with a vane and anemometer like the newer i70 or the ST60.
My question is do I need to continue with Raymarine to connect with the C80 for the time being? Further, does putting in a Raymarine wind instrument commit me to a full suite of Raymarine electronics?
We are racing and need to have better wind direction instrumentation but not to the level of the close hauled unit.
Any advice is valuable here.
Thanks,
Dan

[TheOffice]

The ST60 (and possibly your unit) uses Seatalk. you can get the Seatalk to Seatalk NG kit for $100. If you want to connect to NMEA 2000 you tehn need an NG to 2000 cable for about $40.

The autopilot and plotter should be the same brand. Other systems seem to mix and match, but there are no guarantees!