As you will have seen an earlier email we bought a hand held depth gauge, not the one sold by West Marine the “Norcross” model that everyone tells me does not work, but this bright yellow one sold under various labels at various prices which we got from amazon.com for about USD$ 150 and has good reviews by fisherman, boaters and divers.

 

Then what you need is some of these lead fishing weights (which I think are 20 ounce – so about 600 grams), some fishing line and some small buoys. It would be nice to send Suzanne on ahead through the reef and around the sand banks while I followed in the yacht, but with wind and current it will take too long and be difficult to hold the yacht in position.

 

So the plan is to anchor the yacht off and jump in the RIB, then sound the channel and drop these markers in place. Then back on the yacht change the “Track” setting on the chart plotter to record by 0.1NM and draw the track so that we have it for leaving either normally or in an emergency.

 

Then using the EchoPilot Forward Looking Sonar and the chart plotter zoomed in to show the detail in “Head Up” mode in a split screen display in we go. Once in we anchor the yacht, I change my underpants, and then go and retrieve the marker buoys and weights for the next tropical location – after all ain’t life a beach !!