"Summertime"

Built for the discerning boater, Cabo Yachts prides it’s product on having "an international reputation for high performance, exceptional fishability, and an extraordinary level of detail and finish." Stan Miller Yachts in Long Beach, California delivered Summertime, a brand new 35’ flybridge model, to an experienced yachtsman who will use her throughout Southern California and Mexico.

When we planned the electronics package for the Summertime, the new owner made it perfectly clear that large displays were his top priority. His vision is admittedly poor and small black and white screens, and CRT screens prone to glare, wouldn’t do. Therefore we chose equipment with bright color and large graphical displays.

Cabo Yachts builds a very ergonomic dash. The layout is relatively linear. We take the equipment that the operator will manipulate the most often and place it at his fingertips. If the boat owner is right handed, we will place the GPS/Plotter, Radar and Auto Pilot on the starboard side of the dash. The Fishfinder, which needs to be in plain view but remains untouched for long periods, is placed to port. A water temperature gauge is dead center, flanked by the VHF radio and an auto pilot control. The boat’s standard dash was built to house two large screens. To facilitate a Furuno 582L fishfinder, a Northstar 961 GPS Plotter and a Furuno 1942mk2 Radar, we had to build a fiberglass addition. (As seen above)

The autopilot is a Robertson AP20. Its large information screen includes a rudder angle indicator, GPS data and waypoint steering displays. It is interfaced with the Northstar and the radar. The pilot will steer to a set waypoint from the GPS as well as display the waypoint on the radar in the form of a "lollipop".

The Northstar 961XDC is the ultimate GPS/Plotter. It has a daylight viewable LCD screen that displays actual scanned charts, not just digital re-creations.

We upgraded the Furuno fishfinder with a dual frequency 1kW bronze, through-hull transducer. It’s beam angles are 25 and 5 degrees, at 200 and 50 kHz. This transducer gives the 582L exceptional target definition in deep and shallow water.

For communications, the "Summertime" is equipped with a SEA 156 VHF radio. These radios are commercial quality in a compact package. Our client will fish offshore, sometimes for days at a time, so we also installed a satellite phone by Westinghouse. The Wavetalk, to this day, is still the best product on the market for non-cellular telephone service. It has a compact antenna, about the size of a bicycle helmet, and a coverage area about the size of North and Central America combined.

Water surface temperature analysis is vital to sportsfishing. Although the Furuno Fish Finder has temperature and speed, we installed a Dytech temperature gauge for quick reference and redundancy.

The "Summertime" is currently fishing the waters off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and, at last report, was killing them.

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