Daylight Range Finder

One has to wonder why you are so touchy?

I had thought a range finder might cost $100 - to find its factorialy higher (and its use is to fix an anchoring position!!) seemed to me expensive, I was expressing an opinion - what's your beef?

Jonathan
 
Neeves said:
One has to wonder why you are so touchy?

I had thought a range finder might cost $100 - to find its factorialy higher (and its use is to fix an anchoring position!!) seemed to me expensive, I was expressing an opinion - what's your beef?

Jonathan
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No beef, just pointing out I have no opinion on the matter, just passing on info which might be useful to others, where you keep coming back pushing for a judgement.
Live and let live, enjoy your radar :)
 
I use in my work a Leica Disto X310 laser distance meter reading to 1.0 millimetre, with an accuracy of +/- 1.00 millimetres up to a distance of 100 metres. It is waterproof and easy to use with practice. The red spot is difficult to see on a bright sunny day but where there are reflective surfaces, MOB markers for example, the spot scintillates clearly. Prefer Mk1 eye ball for marine work myself.
 
DownWest said:
Struggling to work out why the Mk 1 eyeball is not effective for this. Unless one likes to anchor very close to hard objects? I would find it difficult to sleep if I had a swing that was close to said hard bit. The holding on the bottom would be more important and probably variable enough to negate an accurate measuring device.

Still, that golfing one should do.
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Perhaps it is just me, but my Mark 1 eyeball goes a bit haywire when there are big crashy rocks nearby. I tend to anchor on the side of caution, and then when ashore and looking back realise I could have halved the distance and still been safe.

MD
 
mobeydick said:
How, FFS, did w get on to $1000 Leica gear? I linked to a £68 device (as near as damn it $100). Even Nikon ones are 'only' £130-ish.

MD
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I found them as well.

The link that GHA astutely provided gave an endorsement for the Leica gear and I detected a suggestion (possibly erroneously), in the posts, that possibly cheaper units were less easy to use - though as no-one seems to use them (at all, and certainly not the cheaper units) there was no confirmation. Consequntly the only user feed back is for the Leica.

The lack of user feedback, here or on CF, might suggest people find range finders unnecessary and that everyone relies on eyesight, chartplotters or radar. Certainly on a dark night radar is advantageous. We would concur - having good holding in combination with sufficient swing room are high on our criteria - and 50m, say, of swing room + is relatively easy to find and judge.

We would also agree 50m + to a sandy beach is shorter than 50m + to some big jaggedy rocks! From shore that 50m+ to jaggedy rocks can sometimes be 150m!

What we find is that in popular anchorages it does not matter how much care you take to choose a location (using whatever techniques you have (or a combination) someone, usually many, arrive subsequently and anchor sufficiently close that your original ideas go out the window. It appears to be the herd instinct - "it must have benefits to anchoring in that location, let's get as close as possible". We get terribly twitchy over the competence of people who anchor too close.

This is one reason we no longer go to the Whitsundays.

Jonathan
 
I have a laser rangefinder , and it has been a surprisingly useful gadget. Looking through the monocular you simply place the graticule over the object you wish to measure. A press of a button gives an instant digital readout of the distance. The better models will measure distances well over a kilometre and have an accuracy of +/- 1m up to several hundred meters.

Its major use is to determine if adequate swinging room exists in tight anchorages between obstacles like rocks. It is also useful to determine if other boats are dragging. Even a slight change can be reliably detected and they work just as accurately in the dark. When entering an anchorage at night they are a helpful adjunct to vision and radar. The laser will reliably measure the distance of even small objects like mooring floats.

Mine is an expensive Leica model. I have a bit of weakness for well made equipment :). Like binoculars you can get 90% of the performance for 10% of the price. Several of my cruising friends have inexpensive models and report good results. The slight criticism of the less expensive units seems to be the display can be difficult to see in poor light and the maximum measuring range of low reflective objects like dark rocks can sometimes be a little low, but these are minor points.

It is amazing that something that can cost under a £100 can accurately measure the incredibly short time the speed of light takes to travel a few hundred meters, and use this to calculate distance.

A laser rangefinder is by no means an essential bit of equipment, but if you anchor a lot it might by worth dropping a few hints with Christmas just around the corner :).
 
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When I was in the brutal and licentious we had ones for the OP officer to estimate the distance to targets, so Russian optics suppliers or perhaps even exWD ones might be available. That was over half a century ago.
We used to rate them as about 90% accurate and relied upon fall-of-shot for getting the range right, later optical gunsights did a better job and all have been superseded by laser rangefinders.
Personally I use either high resolution on the chart-plotter or (more usually) my one eye.
I believe Nikon, Swarovski, Zeiss and Monk all offer rangefinder binos in their line-up - not the cheapest of devices and needing regular calibration.
But, heigh-ho, I only anchor about 150 times a season and find my aft kedge with 75m of chain/textile warp usually OK when I (infrequently) tie up to a quay. Anchoring and a RIB are so much more trouble-free and safer for the single-hander of advanced years.
 
charles_reed said:
Personally I use either high resolution on the chart-plotter ....
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That seems a bit dicy to me, but I guess it depends where you sail...

I originally wanted/needed a device for rapidly measuring room sizes, but of course went down the route of 'hey, perhaps I could use it on the boat as well'. Investigation indicated that they were not so much use outdoors, which led me to the golfing ones....

Anyhow, thanks for the replies. My use would not justify a Leica price, but maybe £50 or so (I wonder if they measure rooms as well?). Seems like I would be the first to try one, on here.

MD
 
charles_reed said:
When I was in the brutal and licentious we had ones for the OP officer to estimate the distance to targets, so Russian optics suppliers or perhaps even exWD ones might be available. That was over half a century ago.
We used to rate them as about 90% accurate and relied upon fall-of-shot for getting the range right, later optical gunsights did a better job and all have been superseded by laser rangefinders.
Personally I use either high resolution on the chart-plotter or (more usually) my one eye.
I believe Nikon, Swarovski, Zeiss and Monk all offer rangefinder binos in their line-up - not the cheapest of devices and needing regular calibration.
But, heigh-ho, I only anchor about 150 times a season and find my aft kedge with 75m of chain/textile warp usually OK when I (infrequently) tie up to a quay. Anchoring and a RIB are so much more trouble-free and safer for the single-hander of advanced years.
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A word of caution, many of the military ones and most of the older variants are not eye safe, thus even if you were able to lay your hands on one it would be inadvisable and probably illegal to use in a civilian environment. The current ones are very, very good though.
 
mobeydick said:
Seems like I would be the first to try one, on here.

MD
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I too have wondered about a rangefinder. Spending the summer going stern to on the town quays in Greece still leads to disagreements between me and Mrs as to when to let the anchor go.

The Leica ones are way too costly and unjustifiable. I wonder if the Corprit Portable 600m 656yd Laser Rangefinder on Amazon would do what we want

Do feed back if you buy a rangefinder.

TS
 
Can someone explain why it is sufficiently critical to need to know, to the nearest metre, the distance to a wharf when med mooring. Is this a scope thing, defined by the amount of chain - or what?

Jonathan
 
Neeves said:
Can someone explain why it is sufficiently critical to need to know, to the nearest metre, the distance to a wharf when med mooring. Is this a scope thing, defined by the amount of chain - or what?

Jonathan
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You need to leave enough room when you drop the anchor to have a reasonable scope when the stern reaches the quay. Usually dropping the anchor 3 or 4 boat lengths out is about right but it's not critical. What is critical is that if you drop too soon and don't have much length of chain you run out of chain before the stern gets close enough to step off. My solution to this is to carry more chain rather than start faffing about with a rangefinder as the extra chain comes in useful in other situations. :)

Richard
 
Thanks Richard,

That makes sense and it is what I suspected.

But this appears to imply that range finders would be useful on charter boats, where chain lengths might be parsimonious, but not for people living aboard who surely have 'enough' chain - which is why I was puzzled.

I had thought, also, surely owners can judge 4 boat lengths from the pier - but maybe when you actually do it its much more difficult than imagining it when sitting at a laptop keyboard!

Med and Baltic mooring - a bit alien to the rest of the world, but a technique that would travel :)

Jonathan
 
Neeves said:
Can someone explain why it is sufficiently critical to need to know, to the nearest metre, the distance to a wharf when med mooring. Is this a scope thing, defined by the amount of chain - or what?

Jonathan
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Stern-to on an anchor is a compromise. Unlike normal anchoring, once tied to the quay one has to pull on the chain until its as tight as possible. SInce you will never pull on the chain to make it tight enough to eliminate the curve, too much chain in fact means you are more likely to move back with a big swell. I was surprised to see how curved the chain was when I snorkled having pulled it so tight that the windlass was complaining. If you have too much "give", then your stern hits the quay when the ferry comes in and creates a swell (ask me how I know). So dropping a long way off can be counter-productive.

Of course then you have to consider depth. Too little chain means you will be pulling too vertically and the anchor will simply come off the seabed when the ferry comes in and makes that swell.

So, ideally, you want to make a quick calculation about depth and how much you'd like to have deployed and then drop it at the correct distance. I think that if I had a range finder, I might get it right more often than wrong. As I do not have one, I cannot be sure if the theory can be put into practice.

TudorSailor (waiting to be told how to anchor properly)
 
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