First... Thanks Matt for your continued guidance during my "learning curve." There are a lot of times I feel like a complete idiot trying to understand the process and am constantly humbled by your skill and knowledge and the same for others on this site. To repeat a quote from Waynes World... " I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy"

That said, here's my progress so far. Somehow I've stumbled thru to this point, even using Google Earth Pro. And though I'm still not sure what the heck I did, (Being 60 sucks) what ever it was I got the shoreline result I was looking for transferred to the RM project.

What I need now, besides more lake time to get the rest of the depths, is to figure out how to fill-in the areas marked with red arrows. Most are areas where there should be water, mostly shallow but fish-able especially in the spring when weeds aren't present. Also some of the area's that are now "land" but are shown as water.

I can get some of the shallow areas done by running the boat though even though I'll get all kinds of erroneous readings when the Lowrance sonar 'chokes up' on the shallow, mucky, weedy bottom. That will mean a lot of extra work editing the track points, but I don't mind. There are some areas though that are water, but I just can't reach them. Not easily anyways, but I still want them shown correctly on the map. How to do this is the question.

Suggestions welcome...

looks like some of your coastline doesn't match up with the background map - but depending on your source for the coastline (and the resolution you acquired it from), your coastline is probably more accurate than the lower resolution background map.

Have you tried setting the 'provide depth' to a negative number (see pic below). My coastline was digitised from google earth and since it was a sea wall, depth was set to -2.4m. I collected data at high tide, so any negative numbers dry at low water. You could also increase the interpolation value a bit to 'interpolate' in the areas you have yet to survey, but obviously whilst this would improve the look of your map, it would not be as accurate.

I would agree with Hermes that your shorelines are likely more accurate than the Open Street Map background map, so stick with them. Admittedly it doesn't look as good when displaying the map in ReefMaster but it won't be an issue on the unit. You could also try sourcing a high-def satellite image to use as a background in RM so that the shore matches up better.
Adding depth values to areas that you cannot navigate is a little trickier, because RM does no yet have a dedicated "add spot depths" function. There are a couple of ways to work around this though:

* Add a new map boundary, uncheck Is Bounday and Show Boundary in map, then click the pencil icon and draw the boundary in your map in the area that you want the depth points. You don't need to add too many, as RM will create a depth point every metre or so along the boundary path when it generates the map. Choose the depth you want for the boundary and then build the map.



Note that there is a rather annoying "feature" which means that RM clips a map to the available track point data. This means if you provide extra points outside of the rectangle defined by your "real" data points, then the map won't be extended to include them. In your example, this means I get the following after generating the map with my additional "spot depth" boundary:



If you add some more real tracks below, then this problem will go away.

More generally, we are aware that spot depths would be a useful feature so a proper implementation is planned in a future release.

Thanks hermes. The source for the coastline was Google Pro and yes, I agree, the coast line I made/used based on Google is more accurate than the back ground map. (BTW, the Lowrance background map is even worse!)

Matt. I tried but every time I do, any "points" I try to put in just connect to the shoreline I already have put in. I had to delete them and things went back to normal. I can't seem to get around it and I don't want to mess up the shoreline. There are just so many things I've yet to understand here.

I think the best thing, like you said, is just get out there and make more sonar runs. Despite winter knocking on the door here, the weather's supposed to be good this weekend so I get correct those missing spots out in the middle of the lake, get my shallow readings and get the creek and the small southern lake. If I can get them done Saturday, then I can go out Sunday and start on another small lake I want to get done.

Click "New" in the Map Boundaries section on the right before clicking the pencil button and you will start drawing a new boundary. Otherwise you will end up selecting an existing boundary for editing.
I agree though - if you can get real data then that is the best solution!