I am thinking about putting a
depth sounder in my
dinghy.
Since I've decided to keep and log around the heavy, difficult to store thing for the time being (Avon 340 wheel-steered with 25hp mariner), I want to get as much out of it as possible.
It occurred to me that it could be just tremendously useful, if I'm going to have a
depth sounder on board anyway, to be able to buzz around the anchorage collecting soundings for later analysis. Or check out a questionable place in the
dinghy before attempting it in the mother ship.
The thing is, is that most of the
Baltic Sea is not really surveyed -- the chart data only approaches completeness in the areas traversed by
commercial ships. The bays and passes of the millions of islands, which are the delight of recreational sailors, are largely uncharted, as I found out the hard way last summer.
Could we log
depth data and combine it with position and time data, to create a log we could display in
OpenCPN or otherwise on a chart? That would not seem to be much of a technical challenge, but how to do it, most conveniently?
Maybe using something like this?
http://www.jgtech.com/pdf/JGT-800BT.pdf