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Good Morning:
I am a lake sailor who is venturing out into coastal waters. I am a minimalist by nature and am wondering about the necessity of installing a depth finder on my boat. I only draft 1 1/2 feet and have paper charts for the area where I intend to sail. How much risk am I taking if I rely on my paper charts to guide me into deep enough waters and inform me of the danger of shoals. I have a hand line depth sounder to use if needed. Are there dangers lurking just beneath the waves that the charts don't warn us about? I will be sailing off the Massachusetts, New Hampshire and hopefully Maine coasts.
Many thanks!
1 - Depth is what confirms my position. Whenever I'm coasting, I take lat/lon from the GPS, typically every 30 minutes, plot it on the chart, take the charted depth and compare it to the meter. If they don't agree, you need to find out why!
2 - The meter is most useful when anchoring, e.g., it lets me easily find the 1 fathom curve, which I take as the limit of my swing circle.
3 - Just like the 1 fathom curve, any depth contour is a line of position. You can do magic navigation tricks with compass, fathometer and paper charts, well after the batteries in your GPS have expired.
As usual, the OP has to sort through the information to make his own informed decision.
Many of us consider a depth sounder an essential piece of navigation and safety equipment.
The Cell phone on a mountaintop example is not really the appropriate analogy here.
A better analogy might be do you carry a tent in or not.
Minimalist in today's electronic age would be a compass a depth sounder and a paper chart. The impetus for the question is unclear. Is it the desire to be a " Minimalist" ( a philosophy) or the desire to save money. A prudent navigator has a passion for knowing where they are at all times. To me, that means using all the available sensors and senses at your disposal.
Can you successfully navigate a coastline in a 22 ft O'day with a 1 1/2' draft without a depth sounder.... sure, in the right conditions with good visibility.
The difference between a 1 1/2 ft. and a 6 ft. draft is that when you run aground in the former the water is up to your ankles, in the latter the water might be over your head,
unless you hit an offshore rock and put a hole in your boat.
Rocks, fog, cold water and irregular coastlines in this particular sailing locale should inform the decision differently than a sandy, warm water, regular coastline.
The OP needs to make a risk based assessment, and examine the motivation to forego a sounder. ( monetary or philosophical)
Beyond the depth sounder decision there's the additional safety considerations that need to be factored in when taking a small daysailor offshore on a coastal cruise: weather prediction, tides and currents, fuel capacity, range etc.
All well and good points, but the OP asks is a depth sounder necessary for a minimalist. And the answer is no, it is not. Many people have sailed and boated for decades without one.
But necessary? No, hardly. Many of us have no need to go out in fog, and can just as easily avoid the other situations where a depth sounder is useful.
I'm not against them, quite the contrary. But are they necessary?
No more necessary than cockpit cushions or an enclosed head. And it ain't the cockpit cushions that I'd put at the top of the wish list.(G)
^^ I think the importance of "getting you head out of the cockpit" is often missed.
1. The closest calls I've had were port/starboard crossings where the port boat had a genoa and no bow watch. Unforgivable. Probably had GPS and depth, though.
2. A depth sounder is NOT going to keep you out of breakers. Looking for breakers keeps you out of breakers, and this is more true with a shoal draft boat. You will see waves pass over 3' depths long before you will sound them. I've hit breakers when swells passed over 15-foot sandbars. For a shoal draft boat, your eyes are your best defense in ocean inlets. Really look, since breakers can be hard to spot from the outside.
3. Charts and ATNs can be wrong. I've seen markers sitting on the breakers, blown off station.
Though I've certainly touched bottom a few times, a depth sounder would not have helped. I knew full well I was in thin water, and no harm came of it. With small boats and cats, if it is still water you just back off. If it is an ocean inlet, you don't cut it that thin, since grounding in the surf is no joke. As a general rule, even if your draft is 1.5 feet, you'll want at least 6 feet if there are any waves at all.
Rounding the Delmarva on my Stiletto 27 with my 9 year old daughter for crew. The best father-daughter trip ever. Shallow draft, tender in the wind, fast, and primitive.
4. In shallow draft boats you will see the bottom in all but the very muddiest water.
Use all available tool, but in a small boat, your eyes and ears are the valuable ones.
Costal Navy tools list for me is as follows 1. Mark one eyeball 2. Omnidirectional hearing device (ears) 3. Compass 4. Chart 5. Fish finder. Also useful would be binoculars. And a chronometer.
Fish finders are cheap insurance Walmart and at 65 bucks why not have one
^^ A hand bearing compass is pretty handy as an addition to the mark one eyeball. Even an orienteering compass can work. I assume the OP has one of those.
I am going to buy a depth finder, but not until next spring, in time for the next sailing season. The posts have convinced me that it is prudent and I thank all respondents for taking the time and consideration to reply. Tempest's statement that the cell phone on the ridge was not a good analogy, but rather it should be do you pack a tent I have to respectfully disagree with. People have died in perfectly adequate and safe tents (suffocation after an ice storm) because (my opinion here) they were lulled into a false sense of security by having too much gear and not enough presence of mind about their surroundings. I saved a man's life once on a mountain top that I chose not to camp on because I sensed that a storm was coming even though I had much better gear than the man who almost became a statistic. I packed up and moved from the summit to a sheltered point below tree line. That night the temperature dropped to 28 with 4 inches of freezing wet snow and sleet. In the morning I trekked back to the summit and after much effort and (the man was in the latter stages of hypothermia), convinced the man to stay in my tent and eat my gorp. Two days later the storm broke and he hightailed it off the mountain abandoning a planned 2 week trip. I went on to hike 5 months and over 2,000 miles. I don't always carry a tent. When I do I sometimes carry a survival blanket. If I get caught out overnight without either and the weather turns bad, I know how to survive. It will be a miserable night for sure, but I will see the dawn because I am aware of my surroundings and I know what to do in most every situation. I want to be that proficient at sailing. Once again thank you all so very much!
Warmest regards,
Good decision, someday it might save your skin in bad visibility or in unfamiliar coastal waters. A fish finder will also mark fish so you know what depth to fish in.
Speaking for myself, I want all the help I can get when I can't see or when it gets rough. We fished this boat out of San Francisco without radar because we were cheap. It was a very bad decision that almost cost us our lives.
Dreamdoer, A depth-sounder, like a tent is just a tool. My point was that a tent is a more useful tool on a mountain top in a storm, than a cell phone with no cell coverage.
I've done a considerable amount of winter trekking myself. ( I sail the other 3 seasons)
Having a depth sounder onboard won't guarantee that you don't run aground, but if used in conjunction with all the other data can help fix your position. While you're making purchases, do you have a handheld VHF on the list ?
I had an O'day 22 that had a 24" draft in the late 80's. I didn't have a depth finder either.
We were sailing on the west side of Florida and I was mostly successful in using the great blue heron as a depth gauge. Since they are about 4 feet tall you can safely figure that you can not sail where they are walking.
At least that was my experience. Your birds may be different.
As far as how if you are being stupid if you don't have a depth finder or not the answer for that is very simple.
If you sail your boat for years without and no problem you were smart.
If you crash because of not having one you were stupid.
Can't help but think that if you were close enough to shore to be concerned about 2 foot depth you could navigate by reading the address numbers on the houses.
I was gonna suggest he carry a yardstick, simple me.
I had a depthfinder on my old Paceship 23 - the centerboard. When I heard/felt it starting to drag bottom, I picked it up, turned around, and went back out to deeper water the way I came.
If you sail in an area with a gently sloping mud or sand bottom, feel free to feel your way along while hugging the coast and poking around in coves. But if you're just a bit further off shore and need to worry about isolated rocks, seaside cliffs, ledges, finding your way through fog and the like, knowing the distance from you to the bottom is a very valuable bit of information.
For day-sailing in good visibility, you don't need one. For anything else, they're so cheap, it's prudent to have one. Some areas, like the South San Francisco Bay, it can save you a lot of trouble even in good visibility. How many of you have gone onto the San Bruno Shoals (raise your hands now! ).
There are so many threads where well-meaning folks pile on the advise to get a bigger anchor with a bigger chain, to wear PFDs around the marina, to overhaul everything to ABYC standards with every revision, and to buy every safety gadjet West Marine sells, it gets a little tiresome. Many of us began sailing when depth sounders and LORAN were for rich guys, RADAR was commerial only, and GPS wasn't invented. We knew our limitations and did fine, not expecting recue by EBIRB or cell phone. By all means, we would give hazardous areass very wide berth, knowing they could be hard to spot. We respected dark and bad weather, when there were hazards about. Common sense. The OP sounds that way, to me.
My apologies if I offended anyone. We didn't have one, or radar on this boat in 1964 because we were cheap. Not having radar almost cost us our lives, bad decision not to have both.
I think the advice & opinions offered here are meant to be helpful, nothing more?
what type of boat do you have? 1.5 feet of draft is pretty shallow. most dinghies have about that. as has been stated previously, none of them have depth finders.
I don't think you need one, but they are practically giving simple fish finder/depth sounders away these days. I saw a nice one for 70 something dollars at Academy Sports the other day. If my wife hadn't stopped me, I was going to buy it and put it on my dinghy.
Apparently you don't need the fancy gizmos ...... Just turn round three times with your eyes shut and you will be fine..... See atom voyages on the net
However if you are thinking of fitting one I would go for a good fish finder? I find mine will show the bottom at a greater depth so is good for following depth contour , but more important it gives you a very good view of the sea bed if it is flat or rocky.... If the worst comes to the worst you might have to catch a fish!,,,,
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