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Wind Gear - Worth It?


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I have a Davidson 28 which is becoming a bit of a playground for me. I'm building both sailing experience and boat maintenance, repair, and upgrade experience. I have a bunch of old Raymarine gear onboard which is working well enough:

  • ST60+ TriData
  • ST6000 Autopilot

The speed sensor only seems to make sense with the boat level and I have some "polite conversations" with the autopilot at times but we're getting by. I have also fitted an NMEA gateway so all this is talking to the plotter and broadcasting on NMEA 2K and over wifi to the iPad. I'm a computer programmer and have some electronics background which has helped.

One thing I don't have and would love to play with more is some sort of wind data. I'm particularly interested in being able to put some real numbers to some of the things we're seeing in races, better understanding our VMG etc.

Can anyone suggest any reasonable options that will be good enough without breaking the bank? We're talking about a $20k boat here after all and if it's several thousand dollars it will be a no go. I'm expecting to self install and happy to tinker and work with second hand if it gets the job done. Given that I already have the iPad up and running am I able to install sensors for data without needing to add the screens etc?

All advice welcome as always,
Cheers

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With the name brand sensors I deal with, they will output data to NMEA2k without a same brand display, but you can’t calibrate them without such a display. Calibration is often rough enough after install, depending on weather, then a bit of fine tuning after use. Thus, if you can borrow a display to calibrate the sensor after install, you do t have to get a matching screen. There are benefits though - no charging, always available, waterproof, drums down low for night time. Marine display vrs tablet is a whole ‘nother topic though. 
 

If I were you, if you don’t already know the answer, I’d look into feasibility of running a wind wire down the mast, with a preference for making it work.  Then you know if your looking for wired or wireless sensor. IMO, wired is far better, as long as you can run the cable. 

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5 hours ago, mattm said:

There are benefits though - no charging, always available, waterproof, drums down low for night time. Marine display vrs tablet is a whole ‘nother topic though.

What does "drums down low" mean here? I'd prefer to have a proper display built in but that's more about price. If there's second hand Raymarine gear around that fits it will help with that though. The iPad has the downside of the kids running it down tinkering all the time!

Quote

If I were you, if you don’t already know the answer, I’d look into feasibility of running a wind wire down the mast, with a preference for making it work.  Then you know if your looking for wired or wireless sensor. IMO, wired is far better, as long as you can run the cable. 

I know I have exit access at the bottom and current cables in place which seem to have room but need to get up top and have a look. Are there any particular issues I'm looking for that might prevent it?

 

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Sorry, *dims down low. The back lights on tablets tend to be much brighter on their lowest settings than a dedicate marine display. 
 

As for the mast, ideally look for an old unused cable you can use as a draw wire. Find some slack in a wire and see if you can pull it up / down the mast a bit  - proving their not stuck. I’ve seen masts where all the wires are cable tied together, preventing drawing a new wire through. I’ve also seen a mast where someone had drilled into the electrical conduit through each halyard exit slot, and injected sikaflex into 4 holes, and epoxy into the 5th. Obviously trying to fix a leak down the mast, but resulting in having to pull the mast out of the boat and replace the conduit just to run a new wire.

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IT - If you happen to stumble across another set of second hand wind gear please let me know.
Looking at setting up a portable wind gear system for the race management team at the club.

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