What’s Next?

EXPERIENCED CRUISER TONY FLEMING GETS THE MOST FROM HIS BOAT WITH AN EVOLVING ARRAY OF SYSTEMS. Capt. Chris Conklin adjusts course on the Nobeltec flanked by Furuno depth sounder and radar-overlaid charting to port and full-screen radar to starboard.

If there’s one thing that’s certain and consistent in this world, it’s that change is inevitable. And nowhere on a boat is that more true than in helm electronics, where the competition is stiff and fast-growing processor speed is the (less) limiting (than ever) factor to having the helm you would be proud to call your own, wowing your inner computer geek with a smooth flow of information and lots of pretty colors.

But there’s more to this than just the latest and greatest, of course. Smart boaters don’t buy the next setup just because it’s available. A helm that’s properly set up in the first place will evolve easily rather than allow the power, user interface, and, yes, expense outstrip the realistic needs of a boater. A helm is only as good as the user’s comfort level, and no one probably understands that better than Tony Fleming, founder of Fleming Yachts and an accomplished bluewater passagemaker.

Fleming and his captain, Chris Conklin, have put more than 50,000 nautical miles under the keel of Venture, the Fleming 65 that Fleming set up to use as a stem-to-stern equipment test plat- form. The results speak for themselves over the last dozen years or so, with some astounding passages, ranging from Alaska to the Gal‡pagos and beyond.

Even more inspiring though may be Fleming’s care and feeding of Venture. Every year she takes a break at Delta Marine Services ( www.delta-marine.com) in Sidney, British Columbia on the southeastern end of Vancouver Island under the care of owner Brian Coverley, and whatever needs fixing gets fixed. The importance of a good service provider cannot be discounted. Indeed, the working relationship between owner, captain, and service manager can change the game for the whole experience.

“When you’re building a new model as a builder, the problem is you’re very much indebted to your first buyers because they go out and buy something that doesn’t exist,” says Fleming. “But in the case of the Fleming 65, it was the first time we were really in a position not to have to sell the first boat. And we were able to build it the way we wanted to build it.” So right off the bat, Fleming was building a boat to try out some new things.

“There was a Russian guy here, one of these talented electronics people, and he could produce electronic instruments—they look like the regular thing but they were actually electronic—but they were very experimental,” Fleming says. “We were sort of going with off-the-wall ideas. Because when you have a production boat you can’t really try new stuff because you’re experimenting with other peoples’ boats.”

For a main helm system, Fleming originally opted for the Furuno NavNet VX2, with a pair of multifunction displays, accompanied by an onboard PC running a Nobeltec chartplotter. “The only thing with the Furuno system is that you really had to handle these complicated menu systems and stuff just seems to be arbitrarily scattered around different menus,” Fleming says. “But it was really very difficult to use if you stop using it for six months. When you come back you’ve got to learn it all over again.” But experience with a system counts for something when the discussion turns to upgrading.