MacGregorSailors.com

Looking for a gps that does it all, lakes,rivers, and coastal. With garmen you have to choose fw or marine. am thinking of a garmin 640 for coastal, plus a coloardo portable for lakes. Also looking for ideas on a dingy/kayak to pull behind when touring, thinking of a kaboat or west marine SportFisher inflatable kayak. Any ideas on any of these, or good websites for comparisons? Blue Anglel

Blue,

Have you done a search for the word dinghy, or inflatable, or GPS, or anything you wish. Those subjects are quite frequently discussed here.

Place the cursor on "Forum" and click "Advanced Search". You then can seek out previous post on the subject of your choice. It's tedious, but you can get results.

Ray

Try Lowrance...My handheld had been good to me for over three years...It has a very good WORLD MAP built in and can zoom in on any country. My best test for it is to have it on in the car and see what it reads when it goes over a local bridge. On mine I regularly cross the Swan River on the Narrows Bridge and from time to time head south and cross the DAWESVILLE CHANNEL bridge. in both cases, it shows my track as ACTUALLY on top of the bridge. Now my track is happening that moment but the bridge is part of the world map...they coincide nicely. And because it is that accurate, you can depend on it when in an ocean situation in regard to your distance from shore. .
Do NOT depend on GPS's that show reef areas. THESE ARE MARKED AS A GENERAL IDEA and are not always accurate.
Nothing replaces a good lookout.
Also once had a mounted HUMMINBIRD NS`10 WHICH ALSO WAS ACCURATE. It got me home one day while on charter on a dead flat day, no wind and no swell and the sea was total grey glass...and I knew there was reef everywhere. Just followed the preset track of the safe route in the GPS memory and it got me through fine...40 ft boat, 15 ton, passengers and a rescue boat following behind....and here I am depending totally on the NS10. And the recue boat seemingly depending on MY skills. I had blown an oil line but had repaired it.
GPS's are generally accurate as regards latitude and longitude. If in any doubt, refer to your tried and true PAPER charts.
Only use the ones put out by the official government marine department. Do not depend on those put out as advertising by businesses.
As to a dinghy...anything you tow can give problems. Opt for an inflatable that you can either store uninflated and rolled up on the deck, or even inflated and hung on davits. DO NOT TOUCH QUICKSILVER BRAND. TOTAL RUBBISH. I bought one once when I was in charter and hung it on davits...the sun actually melted the glue and it fell apart...and QUICKSILVER [ the agent] refused to do anything about it. They will rue the day they did that!.
I hope this comment will make marine businesses sit up and take notice...One upset customer can do a lot of damage. businesswise. I'm still upset about it. Got off subject a bit then...
Hope this helps a bit...Puggsy

Take a look at the Seiwa range of chartplotters. I suppose everyone likes what they have but the Seiwa Seahorse with its own onboard GPS is doing a great job where I sail and I especially like the truly daylight viewable screen but it also interfaces well with their depth/fishfinder, as well as my VHF radio and autopilot . It uses C-maps (mine are 2007 version) and has vectored graphics too, so its zoom functions and other display of markers and points of interest are pretty cool. Downside is that is not easily interfaced with a PC, and it has a limited number of track points and very little track analysis capability.

I back it up with OziExplorerCE on my PDA, interfaced via bluetooth to a matchbox sized IBlue GPS. tThe PDA screnn is not good for bright sunlight, and OZI only uses only uses raster maps (from any source but I use the official charts obtainable in tiff format) but it has highly detail unlimited track points, excellent speed and heading logs and a heap of other customizable features that dedicated chartplotters don't seem to have. And the PC interface is superb so I can download and analyze everything. If you are handy with photo editors you can color enhance the maps for daylight viewing, and even add your own information if the map becomes dated. After a new marina was installed where I sail it was not shown on available charts, so I simply walked and sailed around the key features then transferred the track to the source tiff file. I now have an accurate chart of the marina.

I also use an inflatable dinghy, a Silvermarine Nemo 2.4 m. It can be towed, but is easy to stow and carry below deck, can also be stowed inflated on the foredeck of the . Downside is it takes about 15 minutes to inflate

Take a look at the Seiwa range of chartplotters. I suppose everyone likes what they have but the Seiwa Seahorse with its own onboard GPS is doing a great job where I sail and I especially like the truly daylight viewable screen but it also interfaces well with their depth/fishfinder, as well as my VHF radio and autopilot . It uses C-maps (mine are 2007 version) and has vectored graphics too, so its zoom functions and other display of markers and points of interest are pretty cool. Downside is that is not easily interfaced with a PC, and it has a limited number of track points and very little track analysis capability.

I back it up with OziExplorerCE on my PDA, interfaced via bluetooth to a matchbox sized IBlue GPS. The PDA screen is not good for bright sunlight, and Ozi only uses only uses raster charts of maps (from any source but I use the official charts obtainable in tiff format) and it will automatically switch to a more detailed chart of the area in which you are located, such as around an island or port. It has highly detailed and an unlimited number of track points, excellent speed and heading logs and a heap of other customizable features that dedicated chartplotters don't seem to have. And the PC interface is superb so I can upload anything to the PDA or download and analyze everything on the laptop. If you are handy with photo editors you can color enhance the maps for daylight viewing and even add your own information if the map becomes dated. After a new marina was built where I sail it was not shown on available charts, so I simply walked and sailed around the key features then transferred the track to the source tiff file. I now have an accurate chart of the marina.

I also use an inflatable dinghy, a Silvermarine Nemo 2.4 m. Its easy to row, takes upt to a 5hp outboard (2hp is plenty). It can be towed, but is easy to stow and carry below deck or can also be stowed inflated on the foredeck of the . Downside is it takes about 15 minutes to inflate

We sail on the Columbia river and use the std. Gamen it works ok but doesn't show where the lake is backed up just the channel.
We bought a Mercery 9 ft inflateable dingy with an inflatiable keel and very firm inflatiable floor, it tracks very well even at top speed with a 100 ft floating rope. It holds 3+ adults and rows to shore very well and is easily inflated and has a storage cover that folds around the uninflatiabled dingy and protects it very well in storage better than trying to use a bag that's too small.

Blue Angel
Like the name, we have a boat over here with that name and the people who own it are great too.
I use a Garmin Quest for the dinghy the world map was ok for Aust but we put a 4wd road map on for $25 and it now covers everywhere we have been.
We got this one due to the absolute portability, 24hr battery, computor interfacing ease, only got it to draw tracks along suspect areas of water which it shows very well, it also interfaces with the Raymarine sounder but in some remote areas it could show we are actually travelling on ground but then so does the Raymarine (navionics) in the Mac.
The US probably has better mapping than we do and the little quest there comes with street mapping and can be used as a voice guided unit in the car, whereas here it would cost more to buy the Aus street maps than what I paid for the unit ($220) which is complete with US maps.
Any Aussies using GPS especially on water please do not trust them, use them as a guide only, have always found the Garmin to be very user friendly even for me and much faster than the old Magelan models.
We have used ours in the five mainland eastern states for driving, hunting, exploring land and water and as a backup for the Raymarine in the Mac in fact I prefer to use it in some cases instead of the big one as it quicker and easier.
For a dinghy we use a 12' aluminium vee nose punt with rubber padding on the gunnels more for fishing and safety and except for one occasion where I forgot it was there when running directly onto the beach it has been no hassles.
Bob

I have the 727c hummingbird,with GPS, depth, speed,temp., plotting/tracking, all seem to work well.
for a dingy, be sure to look at SeaEagle, I just bought their inflatable pontoon, w/ sail.
looks like it's good stuff.

One of the reasons that you GPS shows you over land rather than water is because of a thing call offsets
It is the difference between paper charts and GPS
The paper charts have this value in the notation section of the older charts.
You plug this value into the GPS and it should fix the anomoly
Every time you change to a new chart you need to check this as it changed from chart to chart.

Allan

We have the Garmin 440sx chartplotter. It works great, gives speed, depth and water temp. I upgraded the charts with the bluewater lakes that gives more detail, but for coastal boaters the standard charts are pretty good.

Dingy? We just beach the boat and haven't had a need for one.

I have the eagle/lorrance version with depth, speed, and temp and uploadable maps on a smart card and it has been accurate and worked fine - and was affordable without having to keep buying things from garmen. It quit - I suspect from taking an unplaned drop - at the end of the season and I keep meaning to send it in for repair. I also just bought the handheld floating VHF with GPS from Standard Horizon. It is very accurate, no map just coordinates but as a back up with a chart it is great, if I need to find our son in his small boat it has MMSI capablities, and again if I know where he is I can come to him with the other. And it floats so I will let him use it. I have been using it to get weather info and the battery life seems to be around 6 to 8 hours just standing by.

A lot of threads on this.

A hard bottom dinghy if going ashore. Are your plans long term or short? If short you can get by with the cheeper/used stuff. For long term, you need the best. Go with a smaller size to save money but when you need it somewhere where nobody is around, you need it.

I'm plenty happy with my Lowrance 5300C iGPS. I also have the Great Lakes and Maritime SD chip. I love it. I'm hoping to add the Broadband Sounder-1 someday (when the economy comes back )

http://www.lowrance.com/en/Products/Mar ... 300C-iGPS/

http://www.lowrance.com/en/Products/Mar ... Sounder-1/

Thanks to all for the suggesions, for a dinghy for harbours and achorages, have also thought of a self bailing 2 person kayak, like a paddilac, needs to be stable for boarding the high freeboard