hand held GPS useful for divers

[DiverDun]

I am interested in getting a hand held GPS unit that I may take along when going on charters in Canada and the Caribbean and use for land navigation sometimes. I see that Garmen and Magellan seem to be the biggest companies but I am curious to know which produces better marine maps if I am mainly interested to know depth and contours, or even wreck locations.

Any comments

 

[pir8]

Be careful bringing a GPS unit on a boat. Some captains don't want to give up where their wrecks are located.

 

[Nemrod]

Right now I like the Lowrance units. Any handheld can save waypoints and back track etc. I use a obsolete Magellon SportTrack to compliment my Humminbird main unit. There is also now the Magellon "Cross Over" unit but do not know much about it.

I believe you should be careful about the GPS on charter boats. Most wrecks are shown on Navionics maps etc but not reef or hard bottom etc. Such locations are often secrets--or so they think.

I actually had a captain argue with me once because he claimed I was on his wreck and that I knew about it because I saw him on it. I had to remind him that the wreck was shown as Big as Dallas on my Navionics chart to which his face turned bright red and nearly exploded--tuff day for him now that every Tom, Dick and Harry can afford capable navigation and sonar equipment, heck, my boat was better equipped than his charter boat for finding wrecks.

I would politely ask and if they say no then take them at their word, could be a long swim back.

N

 

[ItsBruce]

I regularly take a GPS and a VHF on charters. I've never had an issue ... except once when we needed MY GPS to get home.

 

[cobaltblue]

I feel that Garmin has the best GPS units out there. I'm running a couple on my boat and couldn't be happier. I have and you can get a nice handheld with both land and see mapping for less than $500. The unit itself is a couple hundred and the chartography is $150 for each water region and about $100 for the road maps.

 

[Wildcard]

For low end rec boating, Garmin is just fine. I just got the new TOL Garmin hand held, forget the number right off the top of my head. It's nice but it's not a real chart plotter than can pinpoint like a real GPS/chartplotter can. The screen is just not big enough to show the detail. $500 for the GPS and $150 for the blue chart. For serious boating, they make a nice back up.
PS, don't ever believe that any hand held electronics are realy waterproof.

 

[Nemrod]

I don't think your going to get the same performance from a handheld that you could get with a full size chart plotter running Navionics or Blue Chart etc. The Lowrance handheld iFinder H20(c) will run Navionics cartography charts as well as the Map Create maps and Freedom Maps. That makes it a powerful mapping tool for marine use. I also think it accepts uploads from Delorme Topo USA etc. N

 

[DiverDun]

Thanks for the many comments so far.
Does anyone know if the hand-helds such as Garmin GPSMAP 76CSx using "BlueChart" map has the St. Lawrence river between Kingston and Montreal? Does it show the depth at all times?

Thanks
Jim(DiverDun)

 

[jbmooney]

Thanks for the many comments so far.
Does anyone know if the hand-helds such as Garmin GPSMAP 76CSx using "BlueChart" map has the St. Lawrence river between Kingston and Montreal? Does it show the depth at all times?

Thanks
Jim(DiverDun)

Jim -

Yes

I have the 60Cx, which is the previous model, and it's great. Like a previous poster, I bring a handheld VHF and GPS on every boat trip where I'm not so familiar with the waters that I can get home with my eyes closed. If I had a problem with an operator who got angry with me for knowing where I was, and I couldn't solve it by promising not to tell anyone where I was, I'd probably get off the boat. I've spent my whole life on boats, and I'm not interested in trusting my life to to someone I've never met when I don't have to.

- John

 

[The Chad]

I use a Garmin 276C. I think it works great I use it in the boat attached to a GSD 20 sounder so it gives, temp, depth, bottm contour, and even fish. Used it with the blue charts and went to the FLA keys and Bimini, the blue charts show the contour but if your trolling the sounder will show the actual realtime. I use it in the car too with the city select maps. Its small enough to take hiking if you want so for me its a great dual purpose GPS. My buddy has a 376 which I guess has built in weather or something. Just get the biggest memory card you can so you don't always have to switch maps, and remember you'll have to pay 75 for update codes down the road. think it was about 1100 from west marine (cough "rip-off) but it was complete