During our first summer with the Hanse 531, I tried my best to figure out the rather old Raymarine instruments. Eventually, however, I gave up (at least a little).
Before
“I’m trying to move the map, but it doesn’t move!” little L said, while trying to drag the map with her finger on the screen of the twenty-year-old Raymarine E120.
It was a bit funny, actually. All the children were born after the launch of the first iPhone, and after the mainstreaming of touch interfaces.
Charlotte and I, however, we obviously knew of the history before. That once upon a time, there were also Motorola, and Nokia, among others, which came with tiny dedicated keyboards of their own. (Here in Finland, it is usually greeted with a moment of appreciation when someone brings up a tale about their dear old Nokia Communicator 9000– “I still have mine”, many of us then chime in!)
To be fair, apart from the UI/UX, the Raymarine E120 did work surprisingly well, and even the radar overlay was spot on. The installation wasn’t very beautiful, though.
“It didn’t fit in the box so they put it outside of it?” one nice Swedish person said jokingly to me.
The old ST wind and tri-data instruments were a lot more difficult to grasp, at least when compared to the B&G Triton2s we had on our previous boat. Even after reading the manual, I didn’t understand how to get the wind angles right. And the user interface was (in my humble opinion) terrible.
Here’s the inventory of stuff before the upgrade:
- Raymarine E120 plotter
- Raymarine analog radar.
- Raymarine ST60+ Wind and ST60+ Tridata (port pod)
- Raymarine ST60+ Wind, ST60+ Tridata, and a newer p70s Autopilot instrument (starboard pod)
- Raymarine ST60+ Graphic information display (inside, nav table)
- Raymarine E-series remote keyboard (inside, nav table)
- easyTRX 1 AIS (inside, behind DC panel)
- Raymarine analog wind sensor, Raymarine depth sensor, Raymarine speed & temperature sensor.
The Raymarine temperature sensor actually broke one summer earlier and was showing a constant +40C in the water. (On the positive side, it became somewhat of an inside joke during our sailing. “I wonder how warm the water is?”)
After
A lot of Navico / B&G!
- The navigational heart, a B&G Zeus3S 12″ (smartly installed on top of a metal panel).
- B&G Halo 20+ radar, new ZG100 GPS
- On the instrument pods, new B&G Triton2 displays. (And one white cover on each as one Triton replaced two old Raymariners.)
- New B&G WS310 wind sensor.
- New Airmar DST810 Gen2 depth, speed & temperature sensor (5 Hz speed!). Replacing two old thru-hull instruments with one new left a spare hole to be used as a salt water inlet to the master toilet (which uses only fresh water at the moment).
- New NAIS 500 AIS with its own GPS antenna, hidden behind the DC panel.
- A new Triton2 to fill the hole at the navigation table.
Summing It Up
I haven’t finished updating all the costs (the installation, especially, wasn’t very cheap since there was a lot of old to dig through, before getting the new in place), but when I will, you will see them on the Hanse 531 Refit sheet.
Regarding the functionality of it all: everything worked perfectly during our summer vacation.
“Like it is supposed to work,” said Little L.
Post Scriptum
Check this out! I still have my old one somewhere 😄
