Simple power for a simple boat

I have spent some time looking over the fantastic site No Frills Sailing and it has inspired me to put together a few more articles for this site and ultimately revisit the design of my own web site. So I'm picking up on Lars topic about power on a boat and what is and is not needed on board.

My little yacht has very little need for power as I've equipped her with LED lighting which are mainly internally powered but I have still pieced together a small battery set up the allows me to charge the obligatory phone and laptop at a push. However its main function is to provide power to the bilge pump, lighting for the compass and the anchor light when needed. So what have I done with the everything else you would normally worry about?

£25 depth sounder!?

Inspired by the beautifully simple Navigation setup on the Europa 19 on my previous blog, I started to think about what I would need for a similar set-up.

£25 sounder / fish finder

I already have a basic Hand held GPS and a Iris 100 (as well as a 50) so just needed to sort out a hand held VHF (see previous post) and so I was a little unsure as to a sounder.

After a trawl over the usual sites I had a quick skim over ebay where I found a portable hand held sounder (Lucky Fish finder!?) which had a cable (7.5m) attached transducer, allegedly good for up to 100m. At £25 I was wondering if anyone else ever used one as a sounder rather than a fish finder?

Items pre New Zealand

With the move to New Zealand now looming large I've been looking over what is best bought here and taken with me and what I can get out in the Antipodes.

As I already have a number of items it comes down to the usual suspects...

A Hand Held VHF Radio, such as the cheap and cheerful 3 Watt HH125 and perhaps a bulk head compass such as the Mini Contest. But when you start to look into the price of technology via on-line stores you find there's very little difference in price between the 2 countries once you take the exchange rate into account, although Compasses are a little more expensive then here.

So sadly as much as I love to buy kit, I'll wait till we get there.