We took the boat out two weeks ago and everything was fine. Yesterday, we headed out under power, only to discover that we had no knot meter or depth on the Raymarine bi-data. It displayed all "8's" and very faintly at that. Then I keyed up the power button on the chart plotter and got a faint beep, no display. The autopilot was working perfectly though, all are on the same circuit/breaker. We continued out through the channel to the lake, radio breaker was on, CD player and VHF are on that one, working fine. The problem is that the new DSC VHF expects GPS coordinates from the new Garmin chart plotter and when that doesn't happen it alarms. That takes it off the air and out of service, besides being a damn loud alarm coming through the extension speaker in the cockpit and scaring the crap out of the admiral. So, we shut off the VHF circuit breaker and played with the chart plotter trying to get it up and running, no dice. In the mean time, the display of the knot and depth came back and seemed to be functioning OK, although seemed a bit slow for the RPM's we were turning. The admiral did not want to head out without a functioning radio so we turned and motored back to our slip.

Back in the slip I tried the usual, shut off the breakers, re-power up everything, now the bi-data and autopilot are functioning normally, still no chart plotter. So I unplugged the multi pin plug on the back of the chart plotter, looked at it for some obvious problem, saw nothing, so I plugged it back into the back of the chart plotter and the autopilot re-booted itself. The two are not connected except that the power comes off the same circuit breaker.

In the last two weeks we have had two major storms roll through the marina with heavy rain, high winds and lightning. I'm wondering of all the bouncing chafed through a wire or rain got into something? I plan on doing more in depth troubleshooting on Friday.