New to boating questions on equipment

[gemajean]

Hello all, proud to be part of this forum and I hope I can return the favor of experience one day, but for now, I'm a new boater and have some basic questions and I'm looking for some help.

I'm about to purchase an 03 Four Winns 268 that came with a radar arch. My dealer recommends getting a Garmin 540S GPS for the boat, but I'm not even too sure if that's the best one and also, if I need to get anything to mount on the radar arch.

I won't be doing too much fishing and mainly, we'll be doing day trips, weekends, etc. with the family.

Can anyone recommend a good GPS system and also, let me know if I need any antennas for the arch?

Finally, if anyone has any thoughts on a really good CD reciever/changer system I would appreciate it!

Thanks again!

 

[dingbat]

Re: New to boating questions on equipment

The 540 is a very good unit.

Do you want the best unit or do you want a unit that is best for you?

If you want the best unit for you we need some more details. What?s most important to you? Price, picture quality, ease of use, cost of the maps? What areas do you boat? Some companies you have to buy area specific maps and some companies maps are better than those for a given area.

You can get GPS with internal antennas so you don't necessarily need to mount anything to the arch.

 

[gemajean]

Re: New to boating questions on equipment

Thank you for your feedback.

I think I'm looking at getting the best GPS unit out on the market with the best 'bells and whistles' and wanted to know what people think that unit is.

But also (and depending on the cost), I may go with your thought of getting the best unit for me overall.

For us, if we were to go that way, I'd like to spend around 1k and get pretty decent pic quality along with some maps of the northeast loaded in there (NY, NJ, CT, RI, etc.)

Ease of use is paramount as I'd like my wife to be able to read and use it as well. Sometimes she doesn't even know how to use our remote control

Thanks again for your input!