Yesterday while working with the chart plotter the depth sounder decided to up and quit. Whine whine whine, we absolutely must have a working depth sounder to travel most anywhere and especially anywhere we haven't been. We unloaded the locker where the transducer resides to check for lose wiring. None found, nothing amiss, the transducer is a big round orb that fits thru the hull of the boat that stares at the bottom of the water. Well it doesn't stare really, it uses sonar to reflect off the bottom and tell us how deep the water is as we move along. It was just sitting in its spot looking fat dumb and happy.
Next we took up the floor in the cockpit. Heavy big ole fiberglass trapdoor so Scott could follow the connector from the transducer to the chart plotter. All of that looked fine no cracks or obvious breaks in the cable. The cable leads into the back of the chart plotter. The brand new chart plotter that we had installed in Stuart.?!?! Not really wanting to but thinking of no other alternative, Scott unscrewed the face plate from the plotter to expose the back of the unit to check the cable connection. The connection passes through a little interface box that translates our 6 wire transducer connections to the eight wire connections from the plotter. Hmmmm the plot thickens. We took the top of the interface box off (it was tucked cleverly behind the chart plotter in the helm case) to examine the connections. All of them appeared to be secure, no obvious issues found. He reassembled the unit and we turned on the power. Yeah we saw our sonar screens and could read the depth for about 5 minutes.. ,,,, Crap, and corruption and many unprintable expletives filled the air in the harbor.
We put in a call to Sea Tek (Alex who installed our wind generator) to see if he could come out and take a peek. He is extremely busy, asked us to send the make and model information and he would get back to us. After digging around in our records box we found the needed information and sent it on to him. Meanwhile we pouted and told our tale of woe to Roger and Sue. The silver lining in this cloud is that it happened here and not in the islands. Much easier to get a fix in the states.
Roger found the manual to the interface on line and we downloaded that to my Ipad. At least now we know what all the little wires are supposed to be and how they are connected to the chart plotter. The power to the transducer and signal is sent to and from the chart plotter where the depth and sonar information are displayed. The other good news was if it is the interface module they are relatively inexpensive in boating terms.
We went to bed with the dink tied out the back with double lines and waited for the front to pass through. And she is here with a vengeance blowing like stink and bringing rain showers. After the net and breakfast the Captain decided he wanted to turn on the chart plotter..... and lo and behold we have depth and sonar ...... We aren't sure to be happy or just scared. Intermittent problems can be worse than something that stays broken...... Right now Scott is staring at the plotter with a timer running, thinking perhaps its heat related? Who knows, the mystery continues, maybe it just needed the crap shaken out of it with all this wind. What we really want to be assured is that it won't pull that stunt again. Stay tuned for further developments.
The picture is Scott staring down the chart plotter which is mounted in that white case. The interface fits in behind the chart plotter unit in that case. 51 minutes of operation and the failure has just occurred as I get ready to post this.