AAARRGHHHH...

There is a lot of talk these days about the economy and how things are all sucky. My inbox is filled with various missives about the marine business sector and how things are... well... Sucky! Well of course they don't use the word "sucky" as they use words like dismal, depressed, grim, devitalized, weak, impaired, slack, and gloomy. Which to my untrained economic mind translates as sucks...

Anyway...My Garmin chart plotter is way past its sell by date and even when it was new it was pretty well past its sell by date as it sort of sucked from the get/go. Garmin being one of those companies who like to tweak their gear so that the new stuff is not compatible with the old stuff ( spelled in this case need to buy new charts which is the only thing I actually liked about the old chart plotter) the last brand I would consider for anything electronic on a boat I own is Garmin ( well a toss up really between Garmin and Raymarine for that honor) so I had to search out a new plotter.

Trying to sort through the various marine electronics companies is something of an uphill battle as most are very information light on their products and most marine stores these days just sell boxes. Long gone are the days when your local chandlery was a font of information as most can't even tell you what sort of chart a given chart plotter uses much less what sort of charting is already installed or if you can plug in an AIS to it. That said the locals guys who don't know Navionics Gold or Silver from C Map will at least sell you stuff if you happen to have money. Not so from the various Big Box store in the US of A who seem to find it impossible to just pop something in the mail to your Stateside PO Box ( PO Boxes being something like rocket science in a FEDEX world) or God forbid send something to a boat sailing in someplace like the Caribbean.

Which brings me back to at least one reason that marine business is not doing so well these days...SUCKY service. I have been trying to spend money on a new chart plotter and not cheap electronic charts and it has been something of a nightmare between companies not knowing the products they sell, selling products they don't actually have in stock, unwilling to ship to PO boxes or outside the USA and so on. I won't even get into after sales service as that is a whole different can of worms...

I'm still looking for a chart plotter and charts...