Datamarine to Raymarine ST60 Transducers

[Sundance]

I am looking at replacing the old Datamarine speed and depth with Raymarine ST60's.  My question is, should I expect the ST60's through hulls to fit in the holes from the Datamarine?  I see there are a few post similar, but it does not address this swap specifically. 

I suspect the holes will be too large, if this is the case any advice would be great.

Also, I am adding apparent wind, any tips for mounting the transducer and wiring with the mast up would be appreciated.  I don't expect anything tricky, I will just need to spend some time at the top of the mast.  Will it be easy to get the wire from the transducer into the mast conduit?

Thanks.

[DougP]

This link will take to the Airmar cross reference.  Punch in some model numbers and it will tell you what is compatible.

http://www.airmartechnology.com/xref/default.asp

[Tom Soko]

Sundance,
Unless you take your mast down, or you already have a messenger line in the mast conduit, I think you will have a very hard time getting the Wind cable into the conduit from the masthead.  My conduit ended a foot or so below the masthead.  Yours may be different.  If the hole for either the VHF  antenna or anchor light wire is large enough, you might be able to pull it down with a messenger line, then pull the messenger back up with two cables attached.  Otherwise you will have to drill a new hole.  Sorry for the bad news.

[Craig Illman]

Sundance - And to complicate things a bit further, my conduit was split at the steaming/deck light. Even with the mast down, it was challenging to pass replacement cables through. I had a pretty fat six-conductor wind cable though.

Craig

[DougP]

There's always the wireless instruments...

[Ron Hill]

Jeff : I can see that all of the people that are giving you advice on installing a wind indicator with the mast up, have not read the C34 Mainsheet tech notes of August 1995!!!!
I did just that and wrote an article on how I did it!  Great info in those old Mainsheet tech notes.

[Craig Illman]

Ron - Ok, just read about your fishin' success, but it's been twelve years now, what about the haulout-free bottom job?

[Claygr1]

We did this project last spring.  We purchased the entire ST60 wind package so we did speed, depth, and wind.  The ST60 transducers actually were a bit larger so we had the yard expand the holes once we took the Datamarine transducers out.  We're fortunate because making the holes smaller would have been a much bigger headache. 

We store our boat with the mast down so I can't be of help on the idea of trying to do it with the mast up.  It is a pretty long run (about 54 feet, I believe) from the top to the bottom of the mast so it would seem difficult to me but there are all sorts of ingenious types on this website so I am sure they have found a way to make it work. 

You might find it worthwhile to spend the $200 or so that the boatyard will spend to pull your mast and put it back.  We took the opportunity to replace all of our (pretty corroded) mast wiring and lights with halogen bulbs.  Taking the mast down also gives you the opportunity to inspect and lubricate all of the masthead hardware.   

Anyway, good luck.

[Sundance]

Thanks for the info.  With the three interments, what navigation pod did you use that housed all three?  I was considering getting the tri-data (speed/depth/dist) and the apparent wind so I could use the original two pod configuration.  Thoughts?

[Claygr1]

We went with a Navpod three-port unit, GP131, I believe.  You might consider whether you need to get a new binnacle guard as well.  As I remember, the diameter of the tubes in the old binnacle guard (1 inch diameter) were too narrow to fit all of the wires.

The decision on the tri-data versus the two different instruments for speed and depth really comes down to how much information you want.  As I remember, the package price was not all that much more than the wind instrument and the tri-data (the wind instrument is the expensive piece) and we thought the three instruments would be better for re-sale. 

Good luck!   

[dalevine]

To add to what Claygr1 said (we worked on it together), we replaced the old depth & speed transducers in addition to mounting the wind speed sensor. The wind speed sensor was new and I did it with the mast down; it would have been a real bear to do it with the mast up. You probably know this already: you will have to remove the top of the mast to run the wire down the inside. This is much easier to do with the mast down as you will need to loosen or remove the stays to allow the top of the mast to slide up.

It turned out to be a good thing we did all this because at the bottom of the mast the antenna wire was shorted to the mast and the insulation on the mast lights were worn through and in danger of shorting out. The old wires were simply shoved through a small hole and the wires were bent at a sharp angle against the metal of the mast, which is where the insulation wore through. I drilled a new hole at the bottom of the mast for an additional routing hole to help reduce the strain on the wires and put a plastic bushing in the hole to protect the wire insulation. Also took this opportunity to replace the mast lights. So it turned out to be more than just running a single wire down the mast.

The wires for the new transducers will need to be run out to the pedestal guard (you shouldn't splice them to the old ones). We replaced the pedestal guard because the old one was too short to mount the navpod. We also installed a Garmin chartplotter and ran a cable for NMEA data back to the navigation chart table and hooked it all up to a Raymarine data repeater.