Last summer during our tour of Lake Michigan we had a lot of trouble with the autopilot.  Eventually it gave me enough headache that I decided to replace it mid-trip.  This turned out to be a pretty easy replacement and gave rise to some other upgrades during the trip.  By the end of the trip I had also replaced one plotter at both the lower and upper station, replaced the older Seatalk 1 tridata and repeater with NMEA 2000 / STng displays and added a 7″ Raymarine e7 to the lower helm.

I was still not thrilled with the performance of the original radar on the boat and with the loop coming up knew that I wanted AIS and Sirius weather capabilities.  So, eventually the list grew to include:

• Raymarine SHD 12kw 4′ open array
• Additional 12″ Raymarine e125 for the lower helm
• Adding a Raymarine a65 6″ plotter to the lower helm
• Raymarine SR150 for Sirius weather and audio
• Raymarine AIS650 for AIS transceiver functionality
• A Standard Horizon VHF at the flybridge helm with a second mic for the lower helm
• New Raystar 130 STng GPS receiver
• 3 new VHF antennas for AIS and the two VHF units
• IP Cameras for a view of the cockpit, side walks of the boat and additional engine room views including one mounted looking directly at the Seakeeper
• Additional SThs ethernet switches to support all the stuff on the network

Overall I’m pretty happy with how things turned out.  I’ve once again been able to confirm that running cables through the hardtop is one of my least favorite tasks and that Carver apparently made use of random supports and reinforcement in the hard top for no purpose other than to confound anyone who later tries to run wiring.

Here are a few looks at how it all came out:

I’m currently waiting on the trim piece for the lower helm electronics to be remade to fit the new electronics.  I also have to make up a few filler pieces for the upper helm.