J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment Shopping Instruments, GPS Data on ST60 Speed display

Dan,

The answer has two parts - first is the same no matter what you have. The data is only as good as the calibration. Take the time to set things up right and calibrate the sensors to whatever the instrument manufacturers allow & recommend.

The next part is associated with data rate. Some purists will tell you that you need a 10 hz update rate to be meaningful. I work on the philosophy that the boat as a "system" has a much slower response time and that the once per second update rate offered by NMEA 0183 is sufficient. You can also set different averaging and integration times on various instruments. Thus the calculations for VMG, true wind, etc are non-issues. Look at it this way - when you see boat speed are you looking at absolute value or tweaking to get the most speed.

You'll find that you have more data than you know what to do with. Try a number of data display combinations and learn what works best for you. Upwind you may want something different than downwind. Crusing waypoint displays are great, but not needed around the buoys.

On my "system" - all the sensors are TackTick. The GPS is Garmin or Lorance and my Autohelm is Raymarine X-5. I successfully integrate them all and can say the autohelm performance is excellent. Plus the autohelm is using its own roll / pitch sensor. I have used it in relative wind steering mode both close hauled and off the wind. the wind data and GPS data from two different sources through the TackTick to the Raymarine Autohelm works just fine.

I think you'll be happy you considered opening your aperture to work a system that integrates what you have with what you can buy to add on, rather than starting from scratch. It may take a little more effort on the instrument setup and configuration, but once you figure that out it will work just fine you won't have sacrificed anything in performance.