Hunter Channel 245
After buying a used Hunter Channel 245, new owner Nick Meadow undertook an electronics upgrade with Garmin authorised installer Knight Marine in Port Solent. The boat had an old Raymarine C80 chartplotter, a VHF and a small Raymarine i40 instrument for depth and speed.
He decided to install a new Gpsmap 922, as it supported radar. ‘Plus, the Active Captain Helm feature would give me control of the screen via my smartphone,’ Meadow said. This was paired with a GMR Fantom 18 radar. ‘While Garmin’s entry level GMR 18HD+ would have been enough for my needs, target tracking and power usage were of utmost importance,’ he continued. ‘So I chose the solid-state Fantom 18 for its Motionscope Doppler-effect target tracking, and its ability to lock-on to up to 20 MARPA targets to track their relative positions, giving closest point of approach and time to closest point of approach.’
Also on the list was a gwind wireless wind transducer, an AIS 800 black box unit and a Fusion Apollo for music and FM radio. He kept the old i40 for speed and depth to avoid replacing the transducer. ‘We didn’t want to lift out the boat,’ said Paul Knight, MD of Knight Marine. ‘We bought a Seatalk to Seatalk NG converter and put new N2K connectors to bridge it into the system.’
All the new wiring was hidden away. ‘We had to have the headlinings down at one point, and the floor up to hide the cables,’ Knight added. ‘In the heads, we had to make a box up to cover the back of the plotter displays, which we covered in vinyl.’
The owner also wanted the option to mount the chartplotter at the helm or on the companionway, so Knight created an ‘umbilical’ containing the network and power cables with plenty of give. The radar was mounted on a tower on the transom, and is easily removed when not in use. www.knightmarine.co.uk