Quixote is really a turnkey sailing machine. Several things I would have done for offshore or cruising–like AGM house batteries and a smart charger–are already completed.
The one think I want to do before the delivery is add a better chartplotter with AIS capability. In my opinion, this is poor man’s radar and a “must have” for sailing in/near the shipping lanes.
Although I’m brand-partial to Simrad, I’m leaning toward putting a Garmin 740 at the helm station. The touch screen gives the best ratio of screen real estate to unit size. Plus it has a built-in antenna and a good built-in basemap. For traffic detection, the Garmin AIS class B tranceiver is proably the best bet. Since it includes a built-in VHF antenna splitter, it’s not horribly more expensive than the ACR or West Marine models.
GPS 740: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=37721
AIS 600: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=63743
Probably this locks me into a Garmin radar in the future, if that ever comes to pass. On the other hand, for the type of sailing we do, I’m not sure my (slight) brand preference for Simrad or Furuno matters. Or, to be honest, whether we’ll ever need radar on this boat at all…