Aaron Addison wrote: Consider the following scenarios.
There are arguments for both methods, and situations which call for one or the other; I don't think I'd be willing to risk a disto in deep water passage, and I prefer a tape for the main survey line because the physical presence of the tape is a boon to sketching (being able to count not only distances between stations but also distance from the center line). That said, this is another debate for another thread, and I think the best plan is to just have both since a tape is small and a disto is being used for other things anyway.
Lynn is right about your sketcher(s) becoming addicted to a laser rangefinder. Not only do they facilitate the easy shooting of radials one might not otherwise shoot (including radials to walls/leads unreachable by tape and to major features in the passage), they also take the "best guess" factor out of LRUDs (especially the U) and provide real data instead of estimations.
I had the chance to use Lynn's DLR165K twice over the Fourth of July holiday, and I just barely made it two weeks after returning home before I broke down and bought a rangefinder of my own.
"Although it pains me to say it, in this case Jeff is right. Plan accordingly." --Andy Armstrong