Bob F

Sounds like some new marks that need more serious investigation. I stayed at home too, Bill. Took the opportunity to tidy up the wiring looms on Splash-Out and overcome the problem of some equipment turning off when the transmit is pressed on the VHF. Turned out to be a corrorded connection causing a large voltage drop when the VHF is transmitting on high power (25W). BF

I think you mean a supressor, Kam. Gordon has already tried one of those (the ferrite ring). BF

Oooooh, don't mention that sort of thing, Adam. You'll talk yourself into a problem. I'm sure it's just one of those things that wont appear next time out. I hope I get out soon, but have fun (seriously) messing about with the boat at home. BF

Have you tried connecting the GPS power directly to the battery? In other words, don't connect it to a switch panel or bus. In the manuals I have read they often recommend doing this to prevent interference. Make sure the -ve is connected directly to the battery too, just in case you have an earth bus problem. Dont forget a suitable fuse on the +ve line close to the battery when you do this. Just wire it up loosely first to see if it makes any difference. BF

Nice session, Kam.

It's Adam prediction for tomorrow. He's that good... BF

Now you're rubbing it in, Picky. I knew I should've bought the new Lowrance units with NMEA 2000 which means you can fit their new radar later. Poor old Splash-Out will be struggling to get on the plane with all the new gizmo's and the bank of batteries to run it all. You'll be having me buying one of your big boats next, so I can fit all the gear in. ...hmmmm...not such a bad idea...."Karen, you know that holiday you wanted..."

Sounds good to me John C. If I get another boat it will be a 20 mph max diesel jobby. BF

Not betting on that Pete, but I hope to at least see one on this unit. If it gets me back to port in the fog, I'll be happy. Got caught in the fog last year with just a GPS and that wasn't fun. BF

Keep your head down, Rich. Good luck, mate! BF

Blimey!! Poor old Rich. Looks like we just got out there in time. Should stir up the sea a bit though. Might make the shore fishing better... BF

Gordon, I'd go along with what Barry has said. Try temporarily unstrapping the cables and separating them (power and aerial) and see if it improves things. BF

Started installing the Eagle SeaChamp 2000C Combo unit and thought I'd keep a record of my findings. Overall, I'm very pleased with the unit, but there are some areas where slight modifications by Lowrance/Eagle could make the units even better. - unit doesn't have a low battery alarm. Got quite used to having this on my old Garmin unit which was useful. Fortunately, I have a digital LED battery display which I will install instead. [Lowrance/Eagle should add this feature] - The mounting bracket is a bit clumsy for adjusting the angle of the display. The ratchet has square shaped notches instead of triangle shaped, so you have to fully undo the side knobs to unlock the mechanism. On the Garmin unit you could easily alter the angle of the unit. Having said that, with such a large display and a supurb range of view I'm not sure I'll need to keep adjusting the dsiplay angle like I had to with the B/W Garmin. Removing the unit is a little clumsy, too. [Lowrance/Eagle should look at the Garmin rachet. It would be a fairly small modification to reshape the knotches. Better still, take a look at the quick disconnect feature on the Standard Horizon Combo unit]. - The GPS antenna has a short 4 wire cable attached to it with a 4 pin sealed plug on the end. This then connects to another much longer cable which plugs into the back of the unit. The GPS antenna screws onto my existing GPS mounting but the plug is too large to go through the center hole in the mounting bracket. The old Garmin unit just had a coaxial cable which was easy to remove the plug and feed the wire through the small hole. I dont want to drill a larger hole in my cuddy roof so I cut off the Eagle plug, fed the wire through the GPS mounting, and then resoldered the cable togeather. This will void the warranty on the GPS antenna, but what the heck! [Lowrance/Eagle should either fit smaller plugs or allow the plugs to be removed and allow the cables to pass through the standard GPS mounts] - I will have to buy an optional nmea cable to allow the unit to be wired to the DSC radio. This nmea cable splices into one of the existing cables to allow input/output nmea signals to be sent to/from the unit. Without this I will not get GPS co-ordinates on the DSC radio. Lowrance/Eagle don't supply details of the pin connections so I can't make up a cable. [Lowrance/Eagle should provide the cable as standard now that DSC radios are the norm] - Transducer was easy to install. Has a small narrow plug on the end which makes it easy to route the cable. Same applies to the water speed senor. Nice! - Connection of the DC power to the boat power buses was straight forward. There's two bare wires for the + and -, so making your own connections to suit your boat was simple. - unit powered up first time and acquired satellites very quickly, including the WAAS satellite. Very nice! - interestingly, I can hear an audible clicking from the 50/200KHz transducer unit at a repitition rate of around 2Hz. Never heard this from the Garmin single freq unit. Will it scare fish??? Is it just because the unit is out of water? What is causing the click? It can't be the transmitting freq because that is 50KHz or 2000KHz. - fantastic display with great resolution. Very easy to see text, and text can to altered to an even larger scale and moved around. So, everything is loosely installed right now, and all appears to be working fine, so, I will route all the cables and neatly tie them in tomorrow and button it all up. Can't wait for its first try at sea. Just waiting for the Navionics Map to arrive. Was supposed to be here yesterday! I'll let you know how things go when used at sea. And I'll be honest and candid about the good and bad points. cheers BF

I get around 25-35 miles from a tank of fuel with a Suzuki 70HP 4 stroke and Alaska 500. The advantages of the 4 stroke: - vastly less noise and vibration. - virtually no fumes. - no need for oil mixes. - fuel economy, especially for low speed trolling. Disadvantages: - servicing can be a little more expensive, but after the warranty period is over you can do 95% of the servicing yourself. - can be be slower to pick up from stationary which makes getting to planning speed a little longer when heavily laden. But this was easily overcome by fitting "Dolfin" wings. Also gives a much smoother ride, although you do loose 2 mph on top speed. But most of my fuel economy came from dropping the revs when cruising. Nowadays I prefer to arrive 5 mins later and shave a lot of fuel. Also check that you have got your trim set correctly when crusing. This can make a big different to the fuel economy. BF

How does Rich manage it???? 3 weeks of solid fishing...what does his better half do whilst he's off fishing???... BF

Coddy, of course. Have fun Rich. Saw a lot of guys with fly rods fishing from boats and shore. Gotta give that a try next time. I recon those baby 'cudas would've easily have taken a fly. If you snokel around the piers on the bay side you will see plenty of them hiding in the shade. Some of them look a good size too. The babies are brownish and look like jack Pike. As they mature they go silver. Terrific fun on really light tackle. BF

Just got back from our holiday in Florida. Spent a week in Orlando scaring myself sh@tless on the roller coasters. Where will these rides end? One of the rides in Bush Gardens has the worlds tallest verical drop on 200ft. They hold you at the top of the drop for about 5 secs, just long enough for you to get a good look at the fall and wet your pants, and then drop you 200ft. Holy mackerel!!! Stocked up on all sorts of Stormies, shads and vaious worms at BassPro. I could've spent a couple of days walking round there. They have virtually everything you could think of relating to boating and fishing, although I wasn't able to find any of the replacement landing nets that some of you were after (sorry ). And they didn't stock the Storm Sandeels. They seemed a bit p****d off when I told them they were hot stuff in the UK, and they knew nothing about them. Mike, also was not able to find your Barkfree device. Went to various outlets but nobody had it in stock. Anyway, I survived a week of the kids and the wife laughing at my less than macho performance on the rollercoasters (I'm scared of my own height), and then drove down to the Keys. What a fishing mekka this is!! Not a sailing boat in sight. It was shear sport fishing motorboat heaven. It was quite common to see boats with 3 (yes 3) 150HP outboards on the back. I guess fuel was not a problem in the States until prices went up. Didn't do a lot of fishing except from the small private pier where we were staying, where I had a lot of fun with little Rob catching some sort of colourful bream-like fish, and tempting the odd jack-barracuda to take small baited lures. Watched the huge Tarpon and Nurse Sharks being fed at the restaurant in Islamorada (pronounced Ila-Mor-ada [means purple Island in spanish]). Hired a boat for half a day (a 20ft walk-around with Bimini top and 150HP Yamaha) to do some snorkelling at a reef about 3 miles offshore called "hens and chickens (apparently after a ship that sunk there). This was fantastic, if a bit scarey when you see largish shoals of big barracuda swimming around and expecting something to eat. All sorts of beautiful fish to see. Right at the end of the session I came across two huge Permit playing around in a gulley. My heart skipped a few beats when I saw the size of their mouths. The old survival instincts kicked in for a few seconds (can it eat me? can I eat it? Can I shag it? The latter two were definitely not an option). The week ended with the highlight of the whole trip. Came back to our beach hut on the last day and found a large female Manatee and her cub playing around by the pier. We had heard that they like to drink fresh water, so we placed a fresh water hose in the water and the big female immediately started sucking on the end of it. We were able to get into the water and play with them for around 45mins before the mother got fed up and moved off. A fabulous experience. At one point Karen was bottle feeding the pup with a bottle of fresh water. They have wonderful temperaments. The mother was not bothered in the slightest about us playing with her pup. What other wild animals would allow you to do this? At an estimated weight of 600lb she could have done some serious damage if she had wanted. I will post some photos later. Also purchased the Eagle SeaChamp 2000C DF combo unit for

Grrrr...

Yep, agreed, any of the C Series (C70, C90, C120) are better than the ones mentioned above, but then they are a lot more in price. Out my league, I'm afraid. The Raymarine I looked at was the smaller standalone FF (similar to the Garmin FF's). The screen quality and image was nowhere near as good as the Lowrance. But if you add another $2,000 you can move in the C series, which is a different kettle of fish! The Lowrance represents better quality and usablity in it's price range, in my opinion. But as we've said before...each to their own. Do your own research and make your own choice. cheers BF

Had a wonderful time in BassPro yesterday (Orlando). Wow, what a place!!! They have a great display of GPS/FF/Plotters, and ready for you to play with to your hearts content, and able to compare side by side. A technophobes' heaven! I will still umming and arrrhing about whether the Lowrance/Eagle were the right choise compared with Garmin, Raymarine (not the C or E series) or Navman and others. It turned out to be an easy decision. The FF on the Lowrance/Eagles have a far superior definition display. It made the others look like toys. In particular, I was very surprised at how poor the Garmin FF looked in comparison. Even when looking at the 3006 and 3010 displays. And even the ease of use was better on the Lowrance/Eagle compared to Garmin. If anything, the Garmin had too many buttons and options, and I found myself stumbling to find what I wanted. I think alot of the GPS/Plotter functions on the Garmin would go unused by the vast majority of us. In comparision, the Lowrance/Eagle was much easier to navigate around. I'll be placing my order on the web for an Eagle Seachamp 2000C DF tomorrow. The sonar/GPS function is not a gimmick in my opinion. I consider it a wonderful tool for finding new marks. Just look at how well it worked for the mark Duncan recorded. Anyway, only time will tell, I guess. Cheers all...we're now off to test out our stomachs and Islands of Adventure

They'll have to find the place first, Duncan. Not as easy as it sounds, especially without the numbers. BF

Ooooh, nice!! ...and congratulations, Adam, on the first to hit 2000 posts!! BF

You can't record sonar data on the Raymarine C120, Pete. It's one of the things I like to do with my toys. And a Raymarine dealer even told be to go for the Lowance, when comparing the lower end of the FF market. Thanks Paul. BF

All action stuff. Terrific! BF

Coddy, I thought I'd already given you my marks?? BF