Garmin Etrex

[MacGyver]

Anyone use a Garmin Etrex to tell speed and position? I am pondering getting one maybe instead of getting thru hull mounted speed and depth. Not that drilling holes in the boat is not my style........just that occasionally I'd like to know the speed........not necessarily all the time.

I saw one on a Catalina 30 when I was working on it.....got me thinking about how accurate are they?
Do the maps work for lakes?
How durable are they overall?

Thanks!
Mac

[kickingbug1]

    jason, i have had an etrex for quite a while. used it for white bass fishing on carlyle to record positions of underwater islands (waypoints). we use it on the audrey j for speed and miles traveled in a days sailing. works great and was cheap. pretty basic though with no maps and no add ons.

[Salty19]

I have one too. They are very basic, no lake maps at all. You have to set waypoints in advance to find your destination. They will tell you speed- current, average and max and distance traveled. That's about it

[Gerry]

I have an Etrax fort use on my Com-Pac 16.  Works well for speed.  I purchased a chart disk for installation.  It works well but I basically can see the shoreline so it is only needed in thick fog or sailing at night.

Gerry

[HeaveToo]

I ran a Garmin GPS Map 76 for years.  It has a base map but it is not a chart Plotter.  You can see the shore line and most Nav markers.

It is fairly accurate for speed and you can see acceleration and deceleration.  The difference is that you are looking at speed over ground.  This means that you may see 3 knots on the GPS but you are actually doing 4 knots through the water (you are just fighting a 1 knot current).  It works in that if you are looking at your destination on land you can see how fast you are moving towards that destination.

If you have a knot meter you can see the speed through the water.  This usually won't match the GPS speed unless there is no current.

I had this GPS on my boat for several years.  I then switched over to a Garmin 441s.  This unit gives me a color chart plotter with the ability to add a fish finder/depth finder.  It also allows for a transducer that will show speed through the water and water temperature.  The unit is under $500.  Think of it this way, if you install the unit with the proper transducer, you have taken three units and put them into one because you now have a depth finding/chart plotting/speed sensor.

[kickingbug1]

   hey jason, did you see salty's clr logo. maybe we can incorporate that on the back with the sailboats.

[InertBert]

I use a eTrex Legend.  Its been pretty good for many years.  I am going to upgrade to the Garmin eTrex 20 this fall for the memory card chart capability.  I think they are very accurate and a good thing to have aboard.  I recommend it.  Worth the money.

[Spartan]

I love my etrex Legend.  Its very durable mine gets dropped and banged regularly when sailing.  It gives good info when sailing, speed, course etc. 
Can be used to navigate to a predefined waypoint, I like tracking my velocity made good when doing so, helps to challenge my pointing ability.

I also like to turn on tracking then down load into gps software. 

Here's my track from last weekend in ExpertGPS ( I just downloaded the trial version) it's neat because it pulls satellite pictures where the track is and lays track on image see below:




And from EasyGPS the free version, you can show the track but not the image/map:



Hope this helps