Plan B is a success, sort of

Mike had recently installed a Garmin plotter into a NMEA 0183 network. He is very good at boat chores and installations and he had years of cable handling experience--just the friend to help me get the GPSMAP 4010 Garmin chart plotter installed at the binnacle. It had been easy to run the network from the navigation station to the quarter--Speakeasy is a Catalina, which has lots of room and few obstacles.

The drop between the plotter and the networks (there are two--Garmin Marine and NMEA 2000) required going through the posts through the cockpit deck that were already conduits for Raymarine and Yanmar instruments. Mike and I could not get the cables down the first two posts, but discovered that the third was shorter and easier. We lubricated the cables with soap and proceeded to pull the cables down on two messenger lines.

After some temporary splicing, Speakeasy has radar, GPS, and chart plotter on two networks (Garmin and NMEA 2000). However ther are two more networks on Speakeasy, NMEA 0183 and Raymarine that aren't on the Speakeasy network. That's another project.