Randy,
Going to go with Furuno NavNet 3D system. Although on the Furuno web site it says the “The Wait Is Over”, this is not exactly the case. They were suppose to introduce the system in Jan. Now it looks like May 1. If you are not familiar with the system you can go to www.navnet.com. Like other systems it is essentially, a chart plotter, radar, GPS, autopilot, fish finder, and more rolled into one networkable package. Comes Pre-loaded with NOAA raster chart library for entire U.S. coastline including Alaska and Hawaii. Might be a little over kill, but what the heck.
As far as the fish finder details are concerned, on the Pacific hull, they have welded transom brackets for transducer mounts. On alloy boats, you must stay away from bronze. Plastic or stainless steel are the recommended materials. On the Pacific hull typically guys run a plastic 600 W transom mounted transducer. However, the Furuno digital fish finder is capable of operating at 1KW. So I went for it. Airmar has a Stainless Steel 1KW tilted element flush mount thru-hull transducer. Tilted element means that you do not have to set fairing blocks to level the transducer to the hull dead rise. The plan is to mount the thru-hull transducer on a custom bracket off the transom flush with the bottom. Have seen this approach with other alloy boats. Don’t really want to run it thru-hull. That 1KW transducer is a monster, and requires a 4 ” hole in the bottom for mounting thru-hull.
Richard
