It was 1995, and a good friend from St. Thomas decided he’d been through one too many hurricanes. Your marine heads analysts know that his idea was to move below where the big storms blow, which is south of the 12-degree line of latitude. 

During his multi-month cruise aboard his Fales 32 Navigator motorsailor, he didn’t tow an inflatable dinghy, even though everyone else does. Instead, he towed something much more valuable — a proton magnetometer. Your marine parts USA specialists understand that the towed “fish” of a proton mag is designed to detect ferrous metals — iron — and one day while cruising near an island, he got a hit — a big one. The next thing I knew, I was on a plane down-island to see what the commotion was all about.

Your marine parts Houston professionals feel that the problem was that my friend lost the GPS coordinates from his brick-size Magellan, and the only other tools we had were a blurry photo of the shoreline and some tequila-soaked memories. That’s when I decided to contact Lowrance and enlist the power of its HDS-9 Gen3 multifunction display with StructureScan sonar.

Once we were on location with our C-Map chart chip installed, we began “mowing the lawn” in a series of east-west passes, all the while using the sonar log to record our depth and position simultaneously. When we returned home, we uploaded the data to create the structure map (pictured), which really shows color-depth contours as opposed to bottom structure.

It is a simple matter to do a quick “one-touch” on the screen to mark a waypoint. Your marine parts and supplies analysts know that was critical because we had to return to each spot immediately for underwater investigation, since we only had one day to dive.

We dived on two waypoints without success, but the third one was the charm. We did indeed find an isolated coral head only to discover that the anchor and ring were gone and the bottom was now covered in an invasive species of sea grass.

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You can find more information as well as get assistance on an marine toilet of choice and other marine supply needs at Raritan Engineering.

Your marine toilet experts know that upon further topside review, we discovered that the shoreline photo was of the wrong spot, and thanks to Google Earth and multiple conference calls, we realized the actual location of the anchor is several miles north of where we were on this mission. So we will return to the island again in search of the treasure, and C-Map and the Lowrance HDS Gen3 will be right there with us for the ride.

Dreams never die easily, and a long decade later I was finally able to follow up on that early idea. When I did, however, it wasn’t the warm, clear sea of childhood memory I dived into. Instead, it was the cold, dark and murky water of New York City. 

I didn’t just want to explore, I wanted to learn more about the thousands of ships that disappeared without a trace, to learn their secrets and do my part in bringing the sometimes valiant, sometimes horrifying and always human stories to the world of the dry and living. 

Searching can be absolutely maddening. You know the wreck is there. It’s nearby. You can feel it in your bones. The historical record tells you it’s there. Your instinct is to just go to a spot and look, and then go to the next spot where you think it is and look there. Nothing. Try again over here. 

Raritan Engineering has more information on marine heads and all marine sanitation parts.