Hummingbird Fish Finder Mount on Hobie Sport using a RAM mount

I finally got around to installing a fish finder on my wifes Hobie Sport.  It takes me forever to commit to where I'm going to put stuff and how I'm going to do it. It really sucks to drill holes in the wrong places!

I had a RAM hummingbird kit kicking around for quite a while just for this purpose. I also had a 5 Amp battery and a bunch of hardware. This stuff had been staring at me for long enough, time to get to work.

I chose to put the transducer between the Mirage well and the sail mast socket for a through hull setup. I wiped this spot with rubbing alcohol first, then I simply covered the transducer bottom with a thick layer of silicone and stuck it in place. It took a good couple days to fully harden. Why didn't I use Goop? This is a high stress area due to the sail and drive, Goop is known to react slightly with the plastic and cause quite a bit of heat, I didn't want to take any chances that I'd damage the hull, and last thing I'd want to find out is that no warranty since it was exposed to a chemical (Goop). Plus on my old Quest I used silicone, it's good for over a season, and in fact the last application lasted two seasons and was still going strong.

Sorry, forgot to snap a picture, lot's of pics out there on the intrawebs of this sort of thing, so I won't bother for now.

Here's the mount I'll be using, it has 1" ball.

I made a spacer out of an Ikea cutting board, this will save me from drilling a separate hole and coming up with some sort of fitting for the wires.

I then drilled out the kayak for the mount, I put the mount just ahead of the 'Down' rudder pull. This keeps it out of the way of the tackle tray and pulling the rudder down. Notice I drilled a big hole in the middle, this is where the plugs will pass through. Also be careful with drilling the holes and hole placement, you don't want to fray the rudder lines which run close by. Stick to the shortest bolts possilbe (only stainless of course), I used 1.25" x 10-24.

I then grooved the spacer, the spacer will go between the mount and the kayak, and the wires will run along the groove.

Here it is all mounted and siliconed up, Note: don't use silicone, stick to goop, silicone does not seem to want to stick to the wire at all. On my other setup I used goop and it worked fine, however I like the fact that silicone is easy to remove so I wanted to give it a try. If I ever sell the boat or move the fish finder I just remove the spacer and leave the ball mount for other gadgets.

Here is the fish finder mounted. The hummingbird RAM mount does not come with any hardware, the fish finder only comes with traditional screws. 0.75" 8-32 stainless machine screws and lock washers are the perfect length for mounting the fish finder base to the hummingbird RAM plate.

I bought a weatherproof 12v trailer plug and pig-tail kit from Wally World. I soldered this to the battery and the power line for the fish finder. The battery terminals were given a couple coats of Goop to make them waterproof, you could use liquid electrical tape like I did on my other fish finder battery also. I put heat shrink tubing on the power line solder joints and then added a big blob of Goop to add strength and make sure the heat shrink is sealed up. Since the battery is sealed this makes for a nearly water tight setup, the only thing left to do is to protect the battery from bumps and bangs. I did this by once again breaking out the Goop and gluing some hunks of foam pool noodle to the battery.

The end result shape is perfect for riding in the center hull channel of a Hobie Sport or Outback.



Here's the plug I used from Wally World;

Tested it out yesterday on an outing and it worked great.

Mission accomplished!

YakDreams