WHAT THE HELM?: Part 2

As I've mentioned I like to have as much control and information available to the helmsman as possible. Which since I do a lot of single handed sailing is usually me. So after I had the electric throttle secured and installed in it's housing at the helm. The question I asked myself is what other things could I add at that location.
The most obvious answer was my Standard Horizon CP180iGPS chartplotter. I never could understand those boats that had their chart plotters installed down below at "Nav" stations. I've always believed the information belonged at the helm and not relayed up from below. Some chartplotters are large and need to be permanently mounted.  Making it look like the person at the helm is speaking at a pulpit. But, the 180i is small enough to be removable and stored securely down below when one wants to. With an additional power cable one could also operate it down below say in anchor watch mode. This is something I plan to do in the future. So with just three additional screws I installed the stand for the 180i on top of the helm control enclosure.

This now provides the person at the helm with a lot of electronic navigation information including location, speed over ground and course information right at their fingertips. The180i also has a lot of other features that I will want to eventually take advantage of. But, to use some of these features I will need to use the connections into and out of the unit. Happily the helm enclosure allows me the room to interface all these signals in a convenient location as shown below:

Here you can see how I have arranged the various terminal strips for power and the interface for the chart plotter signals that I will need to hook up to the 180i unit in the future.  I'll be posting more about these signals and some other items I'll be adding to the helm enclosure in a future post.

 CLICK HERE TO SEE THE WHAT THE HELM?: Part 1