Taylor Marine South Africa - Busting the FURUNO myths!
After many years, Furuno Japan changed their distribution partner in South Africa by appointing Taylor Marine South Africa Inc. TMSA is the exclusive distributor for Furuno marine electronics for the SA territory for commercial fishing and leisure marine markets and Furuno products.
Taylor Marine South Africa, a branch office of the parent company in Australia who has been one of Furuno’s top performing National Distributors for many years and brings with it an abundance of Furuno product experience and knowledge in the sports fishing market.
It was a great pleasure to attend Boatica Cape Town, formerly known as the Cape Town Boat Show where we proudly exhibited the Furuno sports fishing products and launched the Furuno Fishing Fanatics - South Africa logo as a brand.
When chatting to boat owners at the show, there was often comments that as much as Furuno is a desired brand and respected within the commercial fishing scene, Furuno is perceived by recreation and sports fishing boat owners as being very expensive when compared to other marine electronics brands. Another comment that kept raising its head is that Furuno is difficult to operate and lacking in local support. Respecting these opinions we realised that we need to bust a few myths!
The Team quickly realised that we have a big job ahead of us to show boat owners how much they've been missing out on. Our minds started working overtime as to how we go about busting these myths and putting this great brand back on the top shelf where it belongs.
We spotted some familiar faces, Gareth, and Jacqui Decker walking past the Furuno stand taking only a sideways glance with Gareth gesturing towards the stand and saying something along the lines of “Furuno, one day when I’m rich”. This confirmed exactly what I’d been hearing for the last two days and took it upon myself to bust a myth!
For those of you not familiar with Gareth and Jacqui, they own and operate Mad Mahi Marine and Fishing Charters in Cape Town as well as dedicate a lot of time to their popular Facebook Group, SA Ski Boat and Boat Fishermen. They are some of the most passionate fisher folks and boat owners that we’ve met. If anyone has a handle on what’s happening on the fishing scene, then I believe Gareth is a good measure.
The brand itself needed no introduction to the Mad Mahi team so taking the opportunity to quickly run them through some of the Furuno plotter and sounder features as a reference to compare “like for like” with other brands that they have been using and researching for an upcoming refit, we focussed on how easy it is to change display modes between sounder, plotter, radar, pull up radar overlay etc. We set up a few custom screens with split view via the one touch menu. Also, the ease of saving waypoints and plotting a route needed no instruction as it’s very intuitive once you’ve got your hands on the gear. They say that if you can drive a smartphone or tablet device then this is child’s play. With simple one-touch keystrokes, screen swipes and easy to use hybrid (touchscreen and button/knobs for TZT9F & TZT12F) you have the best of both worlds. In the same breath Gareth was blown away by unique built-in as standard fishing features like SST (sea surface temp) overlay and of course the quality of the superior Furuno sounder built into NavNet TZT3. In very short order both Gareth and Jacqui were hooked, pun intended! Furuno is hard to use….. myth busted!
Next was price. Gareth has been looking to refit his charter boat, a Two Oceans 32ft Magnum which has the original Furuno NavNet VX2 plotter, sounder and radar as fitted by the boat builder at time of build. We guess that the gear would be 20 years old, had multiple owners and plenty use and yet it’s still going strong. We did a quick like-for-like comparison of the latest Furuno NavNet TZT12F display, solid-state radar and autopilot with another popular brand and Gareth was pleasantly surprised at how competitive the Furuno offer comes together. Furuno is prohibitively expensive….. myth busted!
This is not Gareth’s first rodeo, he’s owned many boats and knows the importance of local support, both after sales and technical. This is where we busted myth no.3. Taylor Marine SA has a fully equipped workshop with trained technical staff, spares and accessories located in Cape Town. As the official distributor we have direct access to Furuno Japan and support our local authorised dealers around the country. Furuno does not offer local support…. myth busted!
With this information the Mad Mahi Team were busting to get hands on some new Furuno gear and decided that they would refit their 15ft EcoFisha centre console which is often seen fishing for yellowtail around Cape Point. The plotter / sounder paired with a transom mount dual frequency transducer for refit would be a Furuno GP-1971F
Before long Jacqui had the cordless drill out and was mounting the transom mount transducer and bracket to the console while Gareth got stuck into the wiring. The idea of this exercise was to show that with some basic DIY skills and paying close attention to the installation instructions it is possible to install these units yourself.
Installing the GP-1971F is as much fun as using it. Check out the vid where Jax and Gareth do a DIY install.
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