According to the logs I have crossed over five thousand miles of the open sea and seen a fair bit of adventure. I don’t get afraid because I am a friend, through His Son, of the Almighty…but there are some things that weird me out. I woke up on Sunday morning to the information depicted in these gauges and on my chart plotter. These pictures show one of those things that spin my brain cells. I will explain. First, you have to understand how the depth meter works because this is crucial to understanding this weirdness. Stick with me….I’ll keep it simple. The thing about the depth meter is that it flashes the last depth it sees. The sonar signal that is sent to bounces off of the bottom of the sea may have a long way to go and in really deep water it cannot get back to the boat in time for the vessel to still be in range of the echo. If the boat has moved beyond the echo the gauge just shows the last depth it received. Normally, this occurs at about 250 to 350 feet and it will just keep flashing that number over and over. When I left Bonaire the last depth I saw was 332 feet and that was what flashed on my gauge until sometime on Sunday morning. Now, to the pictures; here is what you are looking at: The picture of the chart plotter shows two contour lines that represent depths. The depths between the two lines range from 16,404 and 9,843 feet. The second picture shows my gauges and the one to the extreme left is the depth gauge which is now flashing the last known depth of 26 feet. What this means: Sometime during the night, in a depth between 16,404 and 9,843 feet, something under my boat was within range of my sonar signal. That mysterious something was 26 feet below my hull! And, it had to be BIG enough to bounce a signal back to the transducer! This freaks me out.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 21:04:39 +0000
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