IT’S INSTRUMENTAL

Ihad been sailing my Tayana 42, Eclipse, for a few years without any installed electronics on board. I’d gone pretty far up and down the New England and Mid-Atlantic coasts with paper charts, the Navionics app on my Android phone, a hand-bearing compass and the ship’s compass. However, last year I decided it was time to install a suite of electronics gear in order to make life underway safer, less stressful and more efficient.

I’m an experienced electronics installer, and I realize that the prospect of such a project can be daunting to a boat owner who has never attempted it before. Nonetheless, by following a logical sequence of steps, a reasonably competent DIYer should be able to install his or her own electronics. Therefore, what follows is a brief guide on how to go about it. Although I chose B&G instruments, the principles and techniques described here apply to any networked NMEA2000 (N2K) system.

STARTING OUT

*Make a plan. Before taking a single concrete step, I long thought and hard about the details of a foundational electronics system for Eclipse. As part of this process, I sorted my ideas into needs and wants, and then trimmed the list to fit my budget. For instance, radar and AIS didn’t make the list this time around.

From experience, I knew that if I focused on installing a proper