GPS

[Scott Dunsworth]

I am in the market for a GPS. But I know nothing about them. What are the features that will be needed for sailing. Some are GPS map and some are chart and some are both. I want a hand held unit. I have seen some with anchor alarms and other features.

I don't want to buy something then wished I would have done more research.

Can you all help me out here!

I would like to get one soon and learn how to trust it before the BEER cruise.

Scott

[Tom Lathrop]

Most boating guys I know find that Garmin GPS work best for them. I have had two and think they are more user friendly than others I have tried.

If I need another it will have color which is much more easy to read than B&W. The larger the screen the better. Battery life is a big issue also but the newer ones are better on this. Get the mounting bracket and a power cord to allow running off the boat battery . Most will have fixed mark locations and allow for entering detailed charts of selected areas in addition to general charting of the whole of North America.

Graham has a Navman with touch screen and color with a large screen for the size of the unit. Looks very good to me and you should give it serious consideration also.

[Ken_Potts]

I've got a handheld unit with the capability of downloading maps but I've never downloaded any. I don't do enough sailing out of sight of land to worry about it. I like the suggestion of getting a "backup unit" first and then figuring out the features you want on the primary. I'm going to pretend that's what I did although I've had the "backup" unit for years now and I don't have any plans to get the good one

Ray - The compass rose waypoint is great! I love it and I'm going to adopt it as my own (though I will credit you with teaching it to me).

[Joe Nelson CS#35]

Ray,

Are you getting a graphic representation of a compass rose on your GPS, or are you manually entering in a cryptic one? Please expand on this!

[JeffM]

Ray, let me see if I've got this right: enter the position of the compass roses as if they were physical features on the chart, then ask the GPS for a heading and distance to one, then simply lay a ruler to that bearing on rose on the chart, measure out the distance, and get your position? Very clever! I'm going to look into low-cost GPS right now! I want to go coasting next season...

[Joe Nelson CS#35]

These folks have real good prices. If someone else knows of better, dont be shy about speaking up. I am planning on buying the Furuno 1623 radar unit for under $1,100. There prices on GPS are good too.

[Charlie Jones]

we carry two GPS units. A Garmin 72 and a 76. Both noncharting, non mapping. The 72 is cheaper and has NO descernable differences from the 76. If we had it to do again, we'd buy two 72s.

A data cable allows either unit to talk to our laptop and we can use that as a chart plotter when we need to, but we carry paper anyway, even though we have all the charts for the gulf coast down lodaed onto the lap top. The same cable also allows a plug in to ships power. Even with the new more efficient units, two batteries a day can get steep on a 30- 40 day trip like we do

Both have all the channel markers already entered for all major channels crossing the ICW and both have ICW markers where they are close together or tricky.

For BEER you really don't NEED a GPS. ALL of the courses are pretty much line of sight, and all of the sailing has land visible on both sides.Of course, it is nice for SOG info and current ( cross track)

[Scott Dunsworth]

Thanks for the crash course. This helps out.

Also new Garmin 72's are selling real cheap on ebay.

I'll have more questions soon.

Scott

[Scott Dunsworth]

Well I just picked up a Garmin 72 on ebay for $72. I'll learn on this and keep it for a backup.

Thanks again for the info and tips. I'll let you all know if I can figure out how to use it. It took me a week to figure out my home theater system, so it may be awhile.

Scott