- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
West Wight Potter Mailing List maintainer
dfarrell@ridgecrest.ca.us
List hosted by www.tscnet.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>I got the new Cabela's Catalog today and managed to "waste" about an
>hour reading it when my wife would have had better things for me to do.
me too :)
>There was one item I'd be interested in hearing opinions on. They have
>a "Trolling MPH" meter that seems to be priced right and has just about
>the correct speed range for our boats. All of the other speed meters I
>have seen in the catalogs seem to cost a big hunk of bucks, but this one
>seems almost affordable -- about twice the price of a Knot Stick and
>about half the price of the "Yacht" types.
>
>What do you guys (and Ladies) think?
I wouldn't get too excited about it. I think some accurate way of measuring
speed is a fine way to make us all better sailors, but I don't think this is
it. I have a Bottom Line fishfinder with a speed wheel like the one in the picture,
but I really don't trust its output while sailing, because, as the boat heels
or the weight is shifted, the relative speed of the water rushing over the wheel
changes, even if the boat speed is the same. And on one tack, it can lift completely
out of the water. It works better on a fishing boat because presumably its always
on its feet.
There is a knotmeter using a trailing impeller we discussed a year or so ago
that was in the same price range and it looks like that design would overcome
the problems with a transom-mounted unit.
I've also seen some speed transducers that epoxy to the bottom of the hull and
transmit the signal magnetically to a transducer inside the hull. Something
like this might be mountable on the centerline and overcome some of the problems
I mentioned.
http://www.nwlink.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 29 2000 - 03:27:08 PST