Depth and speed for a BRE

[Anyone can uk]

We are the new proud owners of a Bay Raider  Expedition.

She will be both our adventure boat and a work boat providing adapted sailing for those with disabilities. 

I would like to give her a depth, lat/long  and SOG instrument and have been looking at many options. I undestand that if I get a suitably small transom mounted transducer I can mount it in the front of the centreboard caseing.

I don't need chartplotting abilities or a paddle wheel, I have an excellent waterproof iPad  and little use for water speed. 

I am probably sold on removable and home chargeable batteries.

So that leaves me with what and where issues.

I am looking at Lowrance mark 4 or hook 2 4" Gramin strikers and Echo maps. Either on the CB case or on the aft quater.

Does anyone have experience of these devices, readability and power consumption.

Many thanks Chris

[Julian Merson]

I'm not sure it this is of direct relevance to your circumstances and intentions.
I use the Garmin in one of its previous incarnations - the echomap 45dv.  Unlike you, I specifically wanted something with chart plotting and SOG capability, but chose not to make use of the echo sounder functionality, preferring a NASA Clipper depth sounder.  This was originally purchased for my previous Drascombe, but the same principle has been carried over to the BC20.  The clipper display  is mounted on the cabin bulkhead, and the transducer is 'bluetacked' to the hull on the starboard side, just inside an under-seat locker.  I didn't like the idea of a transom-mounted transducer which would probably be ripped off at some inopportune moment, and the in-hull solution is out of the way, and works just fine. 
Until I can think of a neater solution, the Garmin sits on its housing, attached to a wooden plinth which was designed to fit over the cabin entrance.  When not in motion, the plinth is removed so as not to impede entry to and exit from the cabin.  If I needed to put in the washboards, the plinth could just sit temporarily inside the cabin, or on the cockpit floor.
For the depth sounder, I like the Clipper display which uses large digits, easily viewed, whereas the equivalent on the echomap would be smaller and much less visible.
I use an 85ah battery which currently serves these two devices, plus a 12v charger for mobile devices.  This is more than sufficient for a week's cruising.

[Anyone can uk]

Thanks Julian

My last 3 boats I have fitted with nasa they are great and fantastic value 

This boat I would like to keep bulkhead and hull hole free otherwise I would have ordered the excellent clipper duet for depth and SOG.

I understand allot of people get good results with the fish finder transducers firing through the hull

[Jonathan Stuart]

When I had a BRe I mounted a depth transducer at the leading edge of the CB case. From memory, the moulding includes an area designed for a transducer to be mounted. I ran the cable up the inside of the CB case and in to the cabin via a groove I routered in the underside of the wooden CB cover, filling the small gap left around the cable with silicone. I made a tall thin wooden box that was mounted on the port bulkhead in the inside of the cabin. There were already wooden battens on the bulkhead installed to hold the canvas bags, so I mounted my box to that. None of this required any drilling in to the hull or bulkhead.

The woden box contained a 12v Tracer lithium battery plus the depth unit's base station. As a bonus I installed a couple of 12v power sockets in the wooden box too and used those for recharging phones and running a bilge pump that I used to pump out the ballast. The depth sounder setup I installed used a smart phone (or tablet) as the screen and the depth base station broadcast data over wifi (the base station included a WiFi router). That part of my setup won't appeal to many people but for my purposes I was happy to use a phone when I needed depth. I sometimes mounted the phone on the bulkhead using a suction cup.

On our BC26 we have a transducer that fires through the hull because there's nowhere to mount the through-hull type without drilling. That works fine but on a BRe I'd probably use the CB mount again because it worked well.