Placement of VHF, stereo, battery monitor and navtex?

[dahlke]

Soon it's time to start cutting holes for all the gadgets I'm looking for suggestions on where to mount my VHF, stereo (head unit), battery monitor and navtex (both battery monitor and navtex are from NASA marines clipper series).

I would love to have easy access to the VHF (Standard Horizon GX2000) as I'm going to use it for looking at AIS targets (from Digital Yacht AIT2000S transponder).

Where have you mounted your gadgets? What works well and what doesn't work?

The below image looks a little dull - I haven't mounted any of the mahogany trim yet.

[Sanlen]

Doesn't look dull at all Mads! Seems like you are making good progress I wish I could say the same - too much work again and equipping our RJ85 as she is planned for launching on May 4.


This is how we had the setup in Sanlen earlier. Not so tidy The VHF was mounted hanging below deck to the left (outside of picture), stereo and some other stuff (heater control, 12v-socket etc) panelmounted and Navtex (older NASA series) on the far side of the chart table. Now with new equipment we are planning to mount the VHF flush in the upper part and head unit flush in the lower part of the panel. Navtex will be a integrated unit with VHF and GPS (Silva Nexus) as we have had good experience with this combo before. Plotter will be a rugged laptop mounted on the chart table. It will be visible from the cockpit. We also have plotter software in our (watertight) smartphones - a nice feature that comes in handy when using the dinghy. Our battery monitor will be mounted in the panel below bridgedeck next to the electric panel.

[TamTam]

We rearanged the whole area, for more space and a cleaner look.
This is how it looks now:

Navi.JPG (45.43 KiB) Viewed 37264 times

[Bob McGovern]

The old wisdom was to mount your VHF near the companionway so you could operate the coil-corded microphone while standing in the cockpit. Not so sure that is needed today, with all the other options. Most boats carry a handheld VHF as well as the mounted unit and use that in harbors, shipping lanes, etc. And since you seem like a technical person, Mads ... you can (apparently) train smartphones or tablets to work as cockpit repeaters for many of today's electronics, including AIS, GPS, chartplotters, depth, speed, and wind instruments.... Basically anything with a transponder or satellite signal can be trained to display on your handheld gadget. That carries its own frustrations & I don't think it is something I want for our boat. Tho my partner is clever that way & she can deal with that side of things. AIS, at any rate, can be easily split out to a number of displays.

Electronics are especially tricky because they don't live very long and get added or removed as options and needs change. It is easy for a nav station to become cluttered or haphazard with gizmos and wires running everywhere. One approach is to not cut holes in fixed panels for specific electronics, but rather to cut one large hole and attach a hinged or removable faceplate to it. Like TamTam shows, above. You can then alter or replace the faceplate as required, without leaving ragged holes in your lovely plywood. Easy to get at the wires that way too, and you may be able to screw a plastic tub to the back of the area to keep water off your electronics.

[Nicholas Koligiannis]

Hi to all:

"Moments of Clarity" is the Ballad version with the aft-facing chart table, so I'm not sure that you'll find this posting very useful. For some reason, I prefer the aft-facing chart table; although there's less space, it's cosier and you can wedge yourself in the space better when at sea. I've gone through various arrangements but this is the latest. On the back end, I've mounted a varnished board of 10mm plywood where I've mounted the zero-volt-drop alternator isolator, the inverter and the solar panel charge controller. On the outboard side, I've mounted the CD player and on the inboard side the VHF. Between the two, there's a dome light with both white and red LED bulbs, plus a separate chart light that's mounted above the sliding doors of the storage space. Next to the companionway, there's a teak box for the binoculars and the handheld VHF and above that a plywood box that hides the backs of the cockpit instruments. The first photo is slightly older--and busier--and also shows the autopilot control box that's mounted on the back plywood board. This has now been moved to a lower position, underneath the chart table.

Nicholas