Every year I very carefully clean and anti foul the bottom of the boat ready for the coming season. Part of that ritual includes cleaning the transducers for the depth instrument and log. The depth works without a hitch but I am lucky if I get more than a week out of the log before it packs up. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of the instruments on the boat the problem is with the paddle wheel transducer. These paddle wheel transducers have been around for quite some time now and work by measuring the speed that the little paddle wheel revolves at and thus giving a corrected read out on the display in the cockpit or helm station. The problem is that for the wheels to work properly they have to be free to spin as the boat moves through the water any slight impediment to their free wheeling means that they either don't read properly or not at all and so it is in my case. There is always a lot of weed in Maine and this year has been especially bad for eel grass, which wraps around propellers and anything else that happens to be in the water as it passes, including paddle wheel logs. So for this reason I am transitioning to an ultra sonic transducer of the type shown above. With no moving parts, they measure speed by reading particles as they pass by, and nothing for the weed to grab hold of I am looking forward to the log working all year with no problems.
Made by Airmar who make just about all the the transducers out there it is simple straight swap and because the internal dimensions of the through hull sleeve are identical I can slide out the old transducer and slot in the new one. Well that's the theory at least, I'll let you know how it works out.
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