I don't know if anyone else has tried one, but I bought a transom mount transducer to go with our Garmin 178C plotter/sounder. It was a $50 experiment because I didn't want to haul the boat this time of year to put in a through-hull. The results - it works great. The Ariel/Commander with it's motor welll is one of the few sail boats where that type of transducer will work. I moved the motor slightly to port (Pearl has a slight starboard list anyway) and mounted the transducer to far starboard side of motor transom. Hard reverse was the only time I got any bad info with the sounder.

We will be permanently mounting the screen on a swing arm into the companion way.