Recommendations for Garmin GPS and marine radio

[Jamey Diggs]

Just bought a 1999 Sundancer 270 that hadn't been used in a few years. Basically nothing works on it. Radio is seized up; Garmin dead...
Best Garmin for light fishing and mostly just cruising? Will likely take trips from Merritt Island up to St. Aug on Intercoastal.
Thoughts on radio? Best to have these things installed by electrician?
Thanks

 

[Stee6043]

I think you'll find that the recommendations will vary tremendously depending on your budget. GPS particularly. Size of the display, along with the bells and whistles, will drive price northward quite quickly.

On VHF I'd highly recommend the Standard Horizon GX1700 series with DSC/MMSI capability. A great radio for a good price. Internal GPS/DSC distress calling is a really great feature...

 

[Jamey Diggs]

Thanks much

 

[bobeast]

If you plan on installing both at the same time, consider how they can potentially work together. For example, an MFD with NMEA 2000 can display AIS and DSC targets provided by a VHF which also has NMEA 2000. You didn't mention your budget, so it's not clear what to recommend.

I recently installed a Garmin 7610xsv ($2500) with a Garmin VHF300 AIS ($760). I use a Garmin SteadyCast heading sensor ($120) and an M265 transducer ($1200). Add about $200 in NMEA2000 cables, terminators, etc, and I'm all in at just under 5 boat bucks not counting installation.

As you can see, it adds up pretty quickly.

 

[ttmott]

I'll give you my opinion as a boater in the MI area and areas both North and South. There is no impending need for AIS for in-shore and near-shore boating. My AIS is always alarming because many commercial and sail boats in the marinas leave their AIS transmitting; it's a big annoyance which I usually turn it off when in our lagoon or near shore. In the intercoastal areas probably 1 out of 500 boats encountered have AIS transmitters so value added for safety reasons? Really, none. Almost all hard installed marine VHF radios have Digital Select Calling (DSC) so that's a given. So, for fishing and navigation within a reasonable price - Garmin GPSMAP or ECHOMAP 7 and 9 inch displays with CHIRP sonar integrated and their Bluechart G2 maps are solid reliable units. What would I do?
Garmin ECHOMAP CHIRP 94xv multi-function display
Garmin Chart package G2 Vision HD US009R
Garmin VHF 110 radio
Shakespear 8 foot VHF antenna with no more than 6db gain.
Sonar CHIRP transducer like an Airmar B75M
ACR Globalfix V4 EPIRB
And - obviously the music system of your choice.....