Most of our navigations since we bought our Catalina 36 18 months ago have been day sails in the Santa Monica bay. This year in plan to adventure a bit further. For convenience purpose it would be great to be able to have a charting software at the helm!
Right now our charting applications of references has been weather4d 2.0 running on an ipad and our b&g zeus 2 at the nav station. To get the ipad running for few hours at the helm we need to bring power there.
To perform our usb power requirement I decided to get a “marine” dual usb charger out of amazon. The reviews are positive, it has a dual socket delivering up to 2.1A and it even shows the current voltage!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076FF2G9G/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The plan is to install the usb socket on the navpod(I think I have the GP1300 model) and take advantage of the remaining space.
Draw the hole to perform.
Use an 1″1/8 hole saw to cut the navpod after a first drill at the center of the circle.
Hole done! Trying to understand why DeWalt decided to paint their hole saw in yellow! 🙁
Now the hole is completed, let’s check what is the source of 12V available in the navpod box. Right now we have 12V bringing power to:
- Raymarine ST4000 autopilot
- Garmin charplotter
Not very convenient to take the power from there, should I install a terminal block in the navpod? Any advices?
For now I am going to crimp this 12V source to these 3 devices. Long term I will need to update that. Not sure what is the best way to do it yet. Bring 12V from the DC panel?
As soon as the power is there, everything is working correctly!
