Back to matty's home page

GPS for Sea Kayakers
(recently updated with evaluation at the bottom)

I have previously had 2 Magellan GPS units.  In mid 1990's I first bought a Magellan Colortrak.  This had good battery life and had a basic colour feature.  It could use basic green, blue and red colours that you could use for waypoints etc.

I used this GPS for a few years until the first of the mapping GPS units was introduced.  The mapping GPS unit that I was interested in was the Garmin GPS Map 76 series.  I couldn't afford to get one when they came out so I settled for another Magellan GPS that was on sale.

Pic 1 - Magellan Colortrak, Magellan 320 and the new Garmin GPS Map 60cs
Pic 2 - Screen comparison of the Magellan 320 and the Garmin.  The screen on the new Garmin is terrific.  Although it is very hard to do it justice with a photograph.

I bought the Magellan 320 because it had the marine waypoints saved in it - such as navigation marks lights and lighthouses.  This was a smaller unit than the colortrak and was good for bushwalking also.  I was still longing for a good mapping GPS though.

I kept checking the Magellan & Garmin websites as I waited for the type of unit that I would be happy with.  I was very interested in the Garmin GPSmap 76cs and the Magellan Mariner Color when they were both released.

I just happened to be getting my satellite phone fixed at Island Marine, in Hobart, and asked about the Magellan mariner color and the Garmin GPSmap 76cs.  They asked if I had seen the new Garmin GPS Map 60cs.  I said that I had seen it on the garmin website but I was leaning towards the '76' because it had a bigger memory to store marine charts.  (I was also told that the 60 has a better, brighter colour screen than the 76).

I was told that the marine charts don't take up much space and you could fit a lot of them onto the 60cs.  The maps that need a lot of space are the street maps.

All that sounded fair enough to me to I ordered a GPSmap 60cs.  It arrived a couple of days later and I took it home and installed the computer software.  I had also bought the bluechart cd.  I started the bluechart installation and installed all available charts for the Tasmanian area (purchase of the bluechart cd gives access to one area).

I was pleasantly surprised that all of the Tasmanian charts added up to only about 1.5Mb.  They were installed in a couple of seconds and I then zoomed the map screen in to see the results.

I found that when zoomed out some of the islands were missing from the basic Tasmania map detail (Hunter, Three Hummock, Clarke Islands etc) but when I zoomed in they appeared and there was terrific detail.  The colour screen looked great. 

I had loaded every Tasmanian chart (same as the government chart detail) and found that with that detail I would have no trouble navigating around the tricky areas such as Flinders Island or Robbins Island - in the dark!

The GPS by itself was about A$900 and the bluechart cd (with access to one region) was about $250 (australian $).

This is a fairly expensive toy for the casual user but an invaluable tool for anyone out in the water in areas of strong tidal flow, shallow areas or during night activities, however it is still essential to have a 'normal' compass, map and/or chart, and be proficient with all of these.

One problem that I have had a few times now is that I have kept paddling late in the evening (in remote areas like south or west coast of Tasmania) when I hadn't been expecting to.  I had made good progress and had gone beyond the edge of the map that I had on the deck and the next map was inside the kayak.  I should have planned a lot better - and had more maps accessable because I have ended up doing some surf landings at night without being totally sure where I was.

The old GPS's didn't help much (at night) unless you either had lots of waypoint entered into it or if you had a map of that area handy as well.  The new Garmin GPSMAP60cs (or 76cs) can show you where there are beaches and give you the names of the locations (as long as you buy the bluechart cd).

I have now just paid to unlock the Victorian charts as well and loaded them onto the GPS (as well as all of the Tasmanian charts).  There is still plenty of room left and there is great detail.  This should prove to be very handy this summer during Bass Strait kayak trips.

UPDATE - After using my new Garmin GPS for about a year - I have found that on open water crossings - like crossing the 30km gap of Banks Strait - where there are strong tidal flows and strong winds (at times) the Magellan 320 is more useful than the Garmin.  This is because while crossing these sections the main information I want is how far to the left or right I am from the straight line course between two points (known as XTE - cross track error).  The other information that I have showing is 2: velocity made good (the speed that I am travelling towards my destination) and 3: the bearing that I am travelling; 4:the distance to my destination; There is a screen on the Magellan 320 that shows 4 customised readings on one page - in a large readout size.

The XTE (cross track error) can show me to the metre, how much I am drifting off course.  If I used the map screen on the Garmin I would be able to see that I was moving off my intended course line but it isn't as easy to monitor the movement as it is by reading a number.

So overall - I would use a cheaper Magellan GPS for open water crossings but the Garmin map units (with bluechart charts installed) to look at the maps of coastline that I wasn't familiar with.  You could always use the cheaper unit with the paper maps in a waterproof map case - then you can see a decent amount of the map at one time.  The main problem with the map displays on a GPS is that you can only see a tiny part of the map at any one time.  If you zoom it out then you can see more overall area but less detail.