I do lots of waterskiing, regularly in shallow water so I'm keen on retaining lock for the last few feet of water, both on & off the plane. Manufacturers readily state their max depth, but which makes/models go down to the shallowest depth before losing lock?
I'd imagine most of them will be fine down to a meter or less but if you encounter a rock "a few feet high" in a "few feet" of water at skiing speed, it's a laminator you're going to need, not a sounder
I'd imagine most of them will be fine down to a meter or less but if you encounter a rock "a few feet high" in a "few feet" of water at skiing speed, it's a laminator you're going to need, not a sounder
set your shallow alarm giving some redundancy i set mine at 2m but in the feet scale you can go to less than 3 feet i think i would set as low as possible then have a run over the ground slowly watching the bottom profile.
My existing unit (Garmin FF160 I think) has packed up. My transducer is mounted inside the hull and I was previously getting about 3ft fairly consistently. No margin for redundancy - sometimes I'm shallow enough that I can't come off the plane. Well I can, but I can't pull away again without raising the engine. sand not rocks though!
It's this last 3 feet that matters to me so much more than the other 297 feet of the depth capability!
So keen to know which units work best at very shallow depth before purchasing.
My Lowrance hds gen3 will show accurate depth in shallower less than 1m, when I'm moving over shallow coral I find that 30cm bellow my transducer is enough to clear bottom. You can quite easely calibrate the depth within the menu but I've not needed to, I also have my shallow water alarm set at 1.2m. When travelling at speed I have hit bottom over shallow sand banks and reef because of reaction time to hearing the alarm is to slow when doing 50kmh.
I've also been in water so shallow I hit bottom if I drop off the plane, mainly in silty rivers.
Clewless
spy-sea-one
