I would suggest that you buy the same thing (hummingbird)as you had before
or it equivalent.
Today they have dual transducer which should be a little better.
I have a 4'-6" draft fin keel fibreglass sailboat and I have installed a
Hummingbird fish finder years ago.
The transducer is bonded inside the hull at 18 inches below the water line.
So when a lead sounder reads 6 feet the hummingbird reads less 1'-6" =
4'-6".
This gives me a safety margin. When I go in shallow channel I start to
worry after the sounder reads 5 feet knowingly that I have a buffer of
1'-6". I have checked some charted depth of 650 feet with the Humminbird
and the reading was approximately 650 feet. For a low priced sounder it did
and still does the job.
If I was to hook a depth sounder to a Raymarine C80 and superimpose the
reading on the radar and chart images it would be different.


"shaun" wrote in message
...
Ok folks i expect the war to start.....grin
I am looking to buy a depth sounder for my new boat.
Please keep in mind we are talking budget here not top of the range.
At the moment there is no other instruments on board.
I may marry it to a cheaper plotter/gps but as i work on charts the
plotter is not essential (nice but not essential)
the boat is a full keeler with the cut away for foot
dis 28000 lbs 4'6" draft.
If i could have pro's and con's on your choose
it would be great.
I figure there is more people out there that know a heap more than i do on
these things and have installed them on there boats.
Last boat i had had a hummingbird made by eagle and i got to admit as
cheap as it was it did the job for 5 years and is still doing the job for
the new owner.
Shaun