Sunday, September 1, 2013

The Illustrated Garmin DIY Auto Pilot Installation

It's a "Green Field" autopilot install. By that I mean I'm dealing with a new boat. I've also been waiting for a while to find a boat with little infrastructure, and design forethought for an autopilot. This will allow me to talk a bit about some of the tribulations you can encounter, and what the options are to solve them. At some point I will ask that the Garmin and Teleflex people to leave the room briefly, while I read from the Installer's sacred text titled "In the Real World." The goal is to make you feel good about your chances of installing one of these systems, and have it work, ahem, the first time.

As my colleague Jay Sellers used to say, "Here is my office today." The good news is it's clean, and has room for me. The bad news it's steam room hot, there is little room to install things, and the dealership has already installed a chart plotter, radar, stereo, and other odds and ends.