Compac 27 Wind Transducer Replacement

[AnchorJockey]

I am looking for some information on replacing the wind transducer atop the mast of my CP-27.  I am replacing the instruments and am looking at going with one of the new Raymarine i70s multi-function units.  There is currently a wind transducer installed atop the mast for an old Navman wind instrument that is no longer functioning.  The current wind transducer is of unknown age (but most likely 10+ years old) and I don't know its make or if it is functioning properly, and the wires leading into the instrument were quite butchered so I am looking at an entirely new wind transducer to mate to the new i70s. Does replacing the transducer require taking down the mast for installing the new wiring?  Or can the mast just be detached and raised and the wire somehow fished through?  My marina uses a lift so the mechanic can get to the top of the mast and remove the old transducer and install the new one, but how is the new wiring installed down the mast and out of the mast at its bottom? I have no experience with this and any guidance would be most appreciated.  Bob

[wes]

There is a conduit inside my mast to protect the wires. I suppose in theory you could fish the new cable down the conduit using the old cable as a pull string, but even so the rigging will need to be disconnected so the mast can be lifted a foot or so above the deck, so you can evaluate how to get the new cable through the deck. My cables were run through a hole in the deck directly above the compression post, and the hole was sealed with 5200. It's a mess removing the 5200, cleaning the area and resealing after you add the new cable.

You should install a connector in the wind transducer cable near the bottom of the mast so you can disconnect it in the future when the mast needs to be removed. There are already such connectors in your mast for your anchor and steaming lights and your VHF antenna.

If you are using Raymarine you will probably be running NMEA 0183 or 2000 data cables. The garden variety ones come with connectors pre-installed, but the connector may not be able to be fished down the narrow channel inside the compression post. So you may have to cut off and re-solder a connector. Or you can buy separate NMEA cable and connectors from sources like Maretron or others.

Personally, I'd go ahead and have the mast completely dropped to the ground so you can deal with this without working under 100 lbs of mast suspended a few inches above your precious fingers.

At this point you may start seeing the advantages of wireless transducers!

Wes

[AnchorJockey]

Thanks for the info, Wes.  You confirmed what I suspected, that there is no easy way to do a re-wire.  I would like to know if anyone has any recommendations on wireless wind set-ups?

[bobp]

I installed the Garmin gwind wireless tranducer a couple of years ago. A receiver picks this signal up and feeds it into the nema 2000 network. I select wind instrument on my Garmin chartplotter and the display pops up. It works well but if you do any night sailing the solar charged battery in the transducer won't last much more than about 3 hours after dark.

[Aldebaran_III]

The Tacktick wind system is also wireless. Both transducer and instrument are solar powered, so no wires to run at all. Supposed to be able to run 300 hours with no sun. I believe it's now sold under the Raymarine brand as a T101 http://www.raymarine.com/view/?id=1237

Derek

[AnchorJockey]

All very helpful, thanks!  When I bought the boat last fall it came with a 10 year old Garmin chart plotter hooked to an Airmar P79 in hull transducer.  The depth was not working so I pulled the back off the Navpod and found a rats nest of wires.  It also had a non-working Navman wind instrument with, you guessed it, another rats nest of wired in the Navpod.  Someone really hacked things up.  The GPS works fine except for the depth and instead of trial and error to get the depth working in the GPS I am swapping out the wind instrument for a Raymarine i40 depth instrument and a new matched P79.  So I will be running the separate depth instrument alongside the chart plotter but no wind instrument.  Coming up with a consolidated set of paired instruments for depth, wind and chart plotter was going to be more expensive and time consuming than I want to take on right now.  The boat is for now in the Barnagat Bay so I can live with this set up for a while.

[moonlight]

Some information is missing, but it's easy to gather that the vessel and therefore it's rig is:
1) under new ownership, and
2) over 10 years old.
Knowing that, I'd offer the following:
A) Dropping the mast is easy.
B) Rewiring a mast on some sawhorses is easy (relative to a standing rig).
C) Aren't you really dying to inspect all the standing rigging anyway?  There's no better time...
D) And then you also replace masthead and steaming fixtures with LED, never to replace again.
E) Yes, I just increased the length, cost, and scope of your project...
F) but if you didn't have time or money to do it right the first time, where would you find the time and money to do it over again?