- Stand Alone Sounder
- Real World Antifouling
- Collision Confusion
- Line, Net or Trap Boat?
- Stopping Wood Rot
- Plywood Alternatives
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While reading latest issue “Stand Alone Sounder” I couldn’t help but smile. I just sold my Catalina 22 and for the 15 years I owned it, the sounder was a fishfinder with the transducer embedded in toilet ring wax just ahead of the keel trunk. It worked great. The attentuation from shooting through the hull wasn’t noticeable, and I even got a nice image of the bottom. I think the whole rig was under $150, and that’s only because I went for a nicer fishfinder (mounting for the finder, a handheld GPS and two drinker holders was into a teak bunk board, later changed to starboard, I dropped in for sailing, low enough to step over. ).
The caveats are to make sure you have solid glass below the transducer and to get ALL the bubbles out of the wax. Yes, it will hold the transducer in place for a long time.
My new boat has enough NMEA connected stuff (AP, radar, even the stereo), that I sometimes miss the simplicity of that Catalina.