Puffin is in the water and the Outremer team is finishing off the final details to get her ready for handover. In this post I will describe the electronics, communications systems and sailing instruments we have selected.

Choosing a manufacturer

When it comes to instruments and navigation systems for boats there are a lot of choices from many different manufacturers. I chose B&G equipment for Puffin, here’s why:

1. Focus on sailing

We need instruments that perform well offshore in difficult conditions for extended periods. B&G spends a lot of their R&D effort developing products and features for offshore sailing boats. The Volvo Ocean Race boats all use B&G for this reason. If I wanted instruments for a power boat I would look at Raymarine for a similar reason, but for sailing I prefer B&G.

2. Product volume and market share

I don’t want a small manufacturer with a niche focus on say, just racing. It’s difficult to continuously evolve complex, mission critical software when there is a small user base to exercise all the features and identify problems. More software installed in a wide variety of applications ultimately leads to better software products. B&G has a large customer base in the sailing community both in racing and cruising so I’m comfortable with their ability to deliver reliable software, with minimal upgrade issues when moving to new versions.

3. Familiarity with the equipment

I’ve used B&G for many years and I know it well, which makes it easier for me to operate and troubleshoot when there are any issues.

Puffin’s Instrument Package

Puffin’s nav station. On the left is a 16″ B&G Glass Helm MFD with a separate UI controller on the desktop. At night I divide the MFD screen in two with the chart plotter and AIS overlay on one side and the radar display on the other. The glass helm gives us more display area for divided screen modes.

Outremer works with Pochon, a marine electronics company that does all of the electronics design and install on Outremer yachts. This was also the case when we built Wildling, and I found it worked very well. Pochon does nothing but electronics, and their staff are all highly trained on the latest equipment. I worked directly with Didier at Pochon on our instrument package and he was excellent. He listened to what I wanted and recommended the best solutions based on not just the manufacturer information, but Pochon’s experience with how the equipment has performed on other boats. We worked through alternatives when there were multiple choices available, and he recommended some things I hadn’t thought of.

The schematic above covers all of the equipment for navigation and sailing. I’ll go through them all by location on the boat. Some of the equipment in the diagram is surrounded by a dashed box which indicates optional. This has to do with what’s included in a standard 4X instrument pack, with the optional items being extra equipment that I added to Puffin. Everything in the diagram is installed on the boat.

Navigation Station

The nav station is one of the primary locations used by on-watch crew to monitor the boat and keep a lookout for traffic. At the nav station we have the 16″ MFD. The MFD gives us access to the auto-pilot control, but I added a dedicated auto-pilot controller because I don’t like having to call up the software pilot controller on the MFD when I am using it for something else. We also have an H5000 display so I can always have important information displayed no matter what the MFD is showing. This would typically be depth wind speed and wind angle. There is a VHF radio at the nav station and a remote VHF station at the port helm. Behind the nav station is our AIS transponder. This is a Vesper XB8000 AIS which is connected to the B&G MFD.

Port Helm

The port helm has an autopilot controller, a 9″ MFD which I find important to have at the helm when anchoring or docking, especially at night. We have the H5000 display same as the nav station, and I have a small Triton display which I leave set to a graphical representation of true and apparent wind speed and angle. This gives me constant, easy to read wind information and frees my other instruments for monitoring boat speed, depth and course. There is also a repeater VHF handset at the helm.

Starboard tiller helm

I use the tiller helm seats all the time when sailing, so I have a set of instruments on the starboard salon bulkhead angled towards the helm chair so they can be easily monitored.

Owner’s Cabin

There is a Triton display in the starboard aft cabin so we can keep an eye on wind, boat speed and depth when off watch.

Mast

On the mast we have the wind sensor, antennas for the VHF, WiFi booster, FM radio and Iridium GO satphone and a mast mounted video camera.

We do a lot of sailing around coral reefs in Australia and the Pacific, so having an aerial view helps a lot when navigating between coral heads. It’s also very useful when anchoring.

The radar dome is mounted on the mast spreader. Since we have a fixed mast there is no issue with the software having to correct for the mast angle when displaying radar targets.

Autopilot

We’re using the Precision 9, 9-axis compass. This is all solid state compared with the flux-gate compass that we had on Wildling. I had some issues with the flux-gate losing its bearing when we were slammed by waves from the side when offshore. I replaced it on Wildling with the Precision 9 and it was fine ever since.

The autopilot is B&G with a hydraulic drive. I haven’t used a hydraulic autopilot before, but Pochon have found them to be very reliable, so I went with their recommendation.

Sensors

In the hull we have the boat speed, depth and temperature sensor, and I added a barometric pressure sensor as well.

Communications

We have a Fusion Stereo which allows media playback via Bluetooth. There are two speaker zones in the salon and cockpit, so we can adjust the volume in each location.

We have a WiFi booster and LTE router which gives us internet access vie either shore WiFi or mobile data networks. The router also allows us to leave a webcam connected to watch the boat remotely.

Satellite Tracking

For tracking we chose the YB3i system from YB Tracking. We had this system on Wildling and it was excellent. Their data plans are very affordable and the system is easy to configure via a smartphone App.

I tried to keep Puffin’s electronics as simple as possible, and included the features we found valuable on our previous boats, plus a few extras that I wished I had in the past. I’ll post an update when we have done some sailing and report on how things are working out.