South to Alaska: A True Story of Courage and Survival from the Heartland of America to the Heart of a Dream by Barnes Nancy Owens

Author:Barnes, Nancy Owens [Barnes, Nancy Owens]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rushing River Press
Published: 2010-08-27T07:00:00+00:00

The depth sounder detected water depth, bottom conditions, and intervening objects between the boat and the ocean floor. When turned on, the unit transmitted bursts of high-frequency electrical pulses to the transducer Dad had installed in the bottom of the boat, which converted them to mechanical vibrations. Those vibrations radiated from the transducer to the ocean bottom at forty-eight-hundred feet a second, then reflected back to the transducer. The transducer then converted them into electrical pulses again and displayed them across a small screen on the face of the unit. The results formed a two-color profile graph: red strobes for strong echoes, such as the ocean bottom, and green strobes for weaker returns, such as fish and bottom debris. The depth sounder sounded an alarm whenever the boat approached the shallow water depth preset by my father—most important for keeping underwater reefs and other dangers at bay.

The loss of the depth sounder landed a blow to my father’s ability to navigate safely. He now relied solely on his charts and needed to be extremely vigilant of hidden reefs and shallows. He dreaded going up the Pacific coast without the depth sounder. Unless he could get it repaired, trouble certainly awaited him.

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