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The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.
I'm not sure where I was supposed to post this question so I thought I would try here. I am wondering what you guys think about hand held GPS opposed to the more expensive mounted versions. I would only be using it occasionally for trips to Catalina Island. About a 26 mile cruise off shore. More often than not, Catalina is visible from start to finish but there may be times when I will need to do it at night or in foggy conditions. Thanks.
Handheld gps is good. Just have extra batteries with you. The mounted ones are expensive and stuck on the boat. I have mine because of the depth gauge is built into it or I would have just used a handheld. For 400.00 I got depth and gps and it can hook up to autopilot and wind gauge for a lot less then all off those units separate from one another.
1998 250 WK/TR #355 "Trail Break" Lake Tahoe California
We have a (now) dedicated Garmin C-276 chart plotter that we use on the boat. However, before that I used a Garmin GPS-12 hand held, and I still bring them along as backups (I've got two, found one really cheap in a pawn shop and couldn't not buy it). I used to use the chart plotter in my car as well, but I've since found a dedicated Garmin Nuvi (sensing a pattern here?) that I got for super cheap from a friend, that came with free maps & traffic for life.
My charts are somewhat out of date on the chart plotter, but we also have an iPad with Garmin's free Charting app on it, which also has free updates to the chart data (which cost $30), so we bought an environment case for the iPad to protect it from splashes & rain, and bring that along when we need more precise chart data.
I've only had cause to use the chart plotter in low visibility conditions twice, once in the dark, and once in the fog. By far the in the dark was much-much easier than in the fog.
David C-250 Mainsheet Editor
Sirius Lepak 1997 C-250 WK TR #271 --Seattle area Port Captain --
Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ. The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.