peaman
Sustaining Member
Three years ago, I installed a new B&G DST-810 depth/speed/temperature transducer along with a suite of other NMEA2000 instruments. As others have experienced, the temperature indication failed early on, but the speed and depth have been reliable. Today, my boat went back in the water after its 6-month vacation ashore, and I was surprised to find that the depth indication was not reading normally, sometimes reading a possibly correct depth, and sometimes showing "---". There are two possible explanations for this, and I'd like to get a sense of which, or what, I may need to do.
1. During the time on the hard, on a couple occasions, I turned on the instruments for maybe a couple of hours at a time for the purpose of checking wind and chart plotter function, etc. Since the DST is powered by the network, it too was powered on while out of the water.
2. Today my boat was launched into a small river, in an area which tends to collect silt and organic material. The depth in the marina is pretty shallow, mostly less than 6 feet. This is not my usual sailing area, as my summer base is several miles away.
So I intended to launch today (in pouring rain) on a rising tide, with the intention of heading down river, over reportedly shoaling waters over a sandy bottom, into more open water to my summer berth. But once launched, I saw "---" for depth and chose to pull into a slip pending investigation. Once in the slip, I saw that the instrument would read credible depths like 6.1 to 6.2 feet for several seconds before going blank ("---") repeatedly. I do not fancy the idea of traversing a challenging channel without credible depth information. I have done the trip twice before and both times required "feeling" for the actual channel.
What is the chance that I have ruined my depth instrument by powering it on while out of the water? What is the chance that the intermittent reading is simply due to a soft and indeterminant bottom? Facts, suggestions, anecdotes, and discussion welcome.
1. During the time on the hard, on a couple occasions, I turned on the instruments for maybe a couple of hours at a time for the purpose of checking wind and chart plotter function, etc. Since the DST is powered by the network, it too was powered on while out of the water.
2. Today my boat was launched into a small river, in an area which tends to collect silt and organic material. The depth in the marina is pretty shallow, mostly less than 6 feet. This is not my usual sailing area, as my summer base is several miles away.
So I intended to launch today (in pouring rain) on a rising tide, with the intention of heading down river, over reportedly shoaling waters over a sandy bottom, into more open water to my summer berth. But once launched, I saw "---" for depth and chose to pull into a slip pending investigation. Once in the slip, I saw that the instrument would read credible depths like 6.1 to 6.2 feet for several seconds before going blank ("---") repeatedly. I do not fancy the idea of traversing a challenging channel without credible depth information. I have done the trip twice before and both times required "feeling" for the actual channel.
What is the chance that I have ruined my depth instrument by powering it on while out of the water? What is the chance that the intermittent reading is simply due to a soft and indeterminant bottom? Facts, suggestions, anecdotes, and discussion welcome.
