{ TECH REPORT }
What Worked What Didn’t, After 14 years
By Rebecca Childress
26
Here is the annual repost on gear and equipment aboard Brick House, a Valiant 40, after an almost-completed circumnavigation 14 years is still going strong. I am all but 1000 miles from completing my 15-year circumnavigation…and the original one is still working fine. I guess I got my money’s worth with Raymarine.
IT’S BEEN OVER 14 YEARS NOW THAT I HAVE been sailing around the world, and there are a few things we put on Brick House that are still working well after all this time. We have also over this time added a few components that we should have gone with on the first round, and not waited so long to install.
We did purchase and install a new drive unit for the Raymarine autopilot last year, but our old drive unit remains onboard as a spare because it’s still 100-percent good. Even our old Raymarine AIS transponder just keeps faithfully transmitting and receiving! Raymarine has served us very well on Brick House.
First, all of our Raymarine products...from our oversized autopilot, to our Axiom Pro Chartplotter to our Flir night vision to our instruments in the cockpit are all still going strong! We have a new Raymarine Evolution autopilot with a new P70 display sitting in a box with all the right wires to hook it up should our Raymarine SG3 course computer pack it up. But it never packs up and after
The Navionics charts for both our chartplotter and my iPad, have been fantastic throughout our circumnavigation, and despite buying other brands to try, Navionics exceeded all others. Easy updates, accurate information and features that are expanded each and every year... I credit them with getting us around safely without any catastrophes, as well as helping us to explore places few Blue Water Sailing
