I was horrified at the number of experienced skippers who were forced to return to Les Sables d’Olonne because of problems with nav and comms kit or the systems that charge their batteries. I hope that one day I’ll find out what failed in each case, but I’m willing to bet that cabling – particularly the connectors – was a major cause.
Want to know why? Because I checked a couple of equipment manufacturers’ web sites and discovered that normal practice is to use the same connectors as you are using on your PC (or MAC) inside a nice dry home or office that doesn’t ever jump about the place (unless you live in San Francisco or Tokyo).
If you own a sailing boat and cruise or race on the open sea, and your boat has a network of instruments (GPS, echo sounder, navigation computer, etc., ), could you spare the time to tell me in a comment to this post just how the bits are connected up, and whether you have ever had troubles caused by connectors.
