Forward seeking sonar

[meshugah]

I have a Catalina 42Mk2 yacht and spend a lot of time cruising the Great Barrier Reef on Australia's north east coast. People familiar with the area know that there are lots of dangerous coral bommies below water level. I feel that I could benefit from forward seeking sonar to detect underwater hazards ahead.

Can anyone recommend a good quality system? Any advice would be much appreciated. By the way, I have a Raymarine E120W chartplotter.

[Randyonr3]

I also would be interested as I have an older Interphase Probe for such but our good friends at Garmin haver bought the company and have taken it off the market..
I sent an e-mail to them at Garmin awhile back looking for a replacement for the unit and recieved a reply that it was no-longer being built and in their views, un-nessessary for boating..............

[MarkJ]

I don't think theres any viable ones on the market. You need the Navys budget.
Would love to hear different.

[JPA Cate]

We have a Probe on this boat, and perhaps if Garmin gets a whole lot of queries for forward-looking depth sounders, they'll realize there is a market for it. Ours have proved (two boats with them) quite useful, including in muddy water where there were rock reefs, as opposed to coral.

I totally sympathise with someone who would like to have one and can't buy it. Very frustrating.

Time for a letter writing campaign.

Ann

[sammyo]

Naive question: why wouldn't a fish finder angled forward do mediocre but functional duty? Has no one tried?

[Randyonr3]

The nice thing about the probe is that the beam can be changed in direction and size from directly down to front and adjustable in speed of scan..
Ours still works but after its been on for awhile, it keeps shutting down every couple of minutes..
Its a really valuable package on the boat once you have one and know how to read it..

A couple years back we were entering "MOSS LANDING" between Montery and Santa Cruz on the west coast of the US. entering the harbor, I figured I was ok due to the fact we were within the marked channel.. the wife setting beside me stated we were comming in over the rocks.. in looking over at the probe, she was right, and a quick left turn avoided the problem..
After talking to the locals, we found that at low tide, when the wind is from the north, the channel marks drift to the south side of the channel, AND OVER THE ROCKS...
many other times the probe has saved us, on a couple different boats.........

[Randyonr3]

There is an option........ after talking to Raymarine, they said there is a plug-in for a video input in the new series plotters.. which by the way we are upgrading to..
Anyway, the thoughts are to install an infrared camera facing forward..

Any thoughts??????????????????????????????????

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Randyonr3

I also would be interested as I have an older Interphase Probe for such but our good friends at Garmin haver bought the company and have taken it off the market..
I sent an e-mail to them at Garmin awhile back looking for a replacement for the unit and recieved a reply that it was no-longer being built and in their views, un-nessessary for boating..............

Here's the free translation of "un-nessessary for boating.": The market is so small that we won't make much money designing or building and marketing this item.

What a shame to kill a unique and useful bit of kit.

Jim