Repairs Complete - For Now

We have our chartplotter back and it is working well. It should as it was a very expensive repair. They replaced the main processor board, which I have to believe is the most expensive component. Unlike personal computers which support older technologies for quite some time, it is not the case with marine electronic equipment. Our chartplotter uses C-cards. These cards which plug into the chartplotter contain the charts and are purchased by region. Raymarine has since switched to Navionics for their chart cards which uses an entirely different format. Before investing in our chart cards last spring we considered replacing the chartplotter with a newer model, however at that time it was working fine and had never had any issues so we stayed with it. Once we invested in the chart cards we were committed to our chartplotter. We did accomplish a software upgrade during the repair and the problems we were seeing before the complete failure are gone. The timing of the failure worked out as we were without the chartplotter for three weeks, but since this coincided with our plans to remain in Annapolis it was not an issue. Our backup system which is displaying charts on our laptop which has a GPS unit attached worked extremely well. We used this to travel from the Sassafras River to Annapolis. The drawbacks to this system is that the PC draws a lot of power (comparably) and the display is difficult to see in sunlight.

As of right now everything is working on Ariel so we are good to move on after Linda returns next week.