Velero Reginavideo
We ran out of depth sounder
23 March 2026 · 13 min · 1K views · Mahalt Bay
Hands tape cables aboard sailboat Miss Regina
What this video covers
Javi aboard Regina navigated a reef-strewn entrance to Bahía Mahalt without a working depth sounder, relying on Navionics charts, which he reports were accurate enough to get through safely.0:03 Back at anchor, he traces the fault to a broken section of transducer cable running from a hull fitting (pasacascos) through the boat to the depth instrument — the most awkward stretch to access because it threads behind the instrument panel, behind all the seat backs, and through the hull penetration.1:15
He replaces the damaged cable segment, bench-testing the new cable at the terminal block before routing it, confirming 2.5 metres on the display.4:27 After routing and sealing the connection with self-amalgamating tape, the instrument goes dead again.11:20 The fault turns out to be a connector that had worked loose during the final tidy-up — reseating it restores the reading.12:27 The repair also touches on a mismatched connector: the depth instrument was bought separately to replace a Tridata unit, and its plug had already been modified with a DIY adapter rather than cutting the original connector.5:52 The episode confirms that testing a cable repair before final installation is essential, because a loose connector after buttoning everything up is harder to find than the original fault.
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