[Public-List] Internal mounting of depth sounder??

[Stephen Gwyn]

I actually find depth sounders pretty useful.

The nearest anchorage gets pretty full in summer, and regularly
find myself near the shore making sure I won't go bump in the
night. I check the tide table before hand so I know how much
water I'm going to need.

The second nearest anchor is next to sand bar which shifts.  My
chart is hopelessly out of date, I don't think Navionics on my
phone knows what's going either. Every spring, after the winter
storms, I tentatively follow my best guess based on the previous
year with a nervous eye on the sounder. The rest of the year
I just follow the same track on the chart plotter, again keeping
a close eye on the sounder.

Then, there are two stretches nearby where the water is pretty
deep in the middle, but shoals rapidly from 100+ feet deep to
sandy shallows a good distance out from the actual shore.  If
you're on a run, you can just go down the middle, but if you're
beating, you can either get out the compass and chart and take
bearings every 2-3 minutes or keep a constant eye on the chart
plotter.  Or you can set the depth alarm for 100 feet and tack
every time it goes off.

The only time I've gone aground was at a dock. I shouldn't
have trusted the guy running the dock when he said there was
enough water, I should have got out an oar, a measuring
tape and the tide table.

SG