Gary,
As with so many things, there are positives and negatives with doing it youself or having someone else do it. Half of Chivita's goodies were installed by pro's, half we did on our own. Here is what I learned from this.
When you do it yourself, you know exactly how it was done. YOU control the process in that every nut, bolt, wire, connection etc. was performed by you. You can spend extra on getting the very best in connectors, hardware, fuses, even upgrade the system that came with the boat. WE have almost completely rewired Chivita and she is a better boat because of if. If there is a problem while you are out on the water, you will probably be better prepared to fix it on your own right there since you installed the system. Personally, this is a big reason for me to do it on my own. BUT, and this is the big one, if you don't know what you are doing, you need to take the time to educate yourself on how to do it right or else you will be spending allot of time trying to get the darn thing working. Crossing the bar down in Mike's turf is the wrong time to have your electronics fail because you failed to crimp that butt connector correctly and you blew some fuse located Lord only knows where!
Since I do not outfit boats as a profession, it takes me a lot more time to install all the goodies than a pro. I also triple check everything like my kid's life depends on it. If you plan on taking your buddies out on Saturday to play with all those goodies, that professional installer can probably start Friday morning and have it done well by quitting time, you on the other hand might want to start a week or two before. If you only have a free hour every other Thursday night to work on it, you might get a bit frustrated and your buddies will have some fun pulling your leg about when that dang boat is going to be finished.
There are several books out there that can help educate you on how to wire a boat correctly and while your intent may be to learn only how to hook that GPS up, by reading up on it you will become much more competent a skipper as you will better understand your entire wiring system. On the other hand, if you have little patience, perhaps a pro would be a much better choice. I notice that when I am frustrated or trying to hurry, it seems every screw strips and every connection fails.
Greg up in Alaska (Red Fox) has almost completely redesigned and rebuilt his C-Dory, all on his own. That guy has made more modifications per square inch than I think we could count but people like Greg and Mike are the ones I would prefer to be out with in a nasty mess as they know their boats up and down and could probably rebuild an entire engine while in the middle of a hurricane! As far as I know, both Greg and Mike are self taught!
If you choose to go the pro route, find someone with whom you can communicate well. Make sure you let them know EXACTLY what you want the end result to be and where you want everything to end up. Specify what quality you expect or ask what he or she recommends. The more time you spend ironing out these details in the begining the happier you are going to be with the money you spent. Be carefull of getting a friend to help out just so save a buck or two, you might end up loosing that friend and having to re-do the whole thing again.
I'm with Mike, you can do it if you have the time and patience and you'll learn more by going that route. But if you have the extra cash, they call them "Pros" for a reason. I like knowing every last inch of my boat, this also makes routine maintenance kind of a fun exercise that I look forward to as I know Chivita so well.
Good luck either way, and no, so far we have not blown up in the middle of the shipping channel due to mis-crimped butt connector!
"Chivita" Dave
