Something you might want to read, a special level of stupid, and in the “a better work week” department…
I recently noticed that Fiji now requires folks to have an AIS transponder for anyone sailing in their waters. Sadly, I expect, this sort of thing is going to be a common requirement for a lot of the places we want to go.
So, being me, my initial question is…
What’s it going to cost me?
Over at West Marine, the least expensive AIS transponder they seem to have is a Garmin AIS 800 for $1049. While a quick look over at Defender has the Digital Yacht Class B AIS Transponder – ZDIGAIT1500 for a much more affordable $432.99. Which, considering, seems to be somewhat affordable. Looking at the Digital Yacht website there is no listing for the AIT1500 so I assume that Defender has discontinued older models at discount.
The least expensive AIS transponder on the Digital Yacht website is their AIT 2000 currently showing a discounted price of $699.95. Which, in my view is a much better deal than the Garmin.
I’ll continue to check around to see if there are any other deals about but, for the moment, the units from Defender seem to be the best current option.
That said, there’s still the quasi-legal semi-DIY option of using a net marker which can be found for $70 bucks or so…