My boat engine failed. It was diagnosed as maybe a broken crank shaft.
We sailed the boat on the Saint John river with the wind nose on and against
tidal current.
From 21:30 on the fog and darkness rolled in. We had zero visibility with
limited batteries power. With used the Magellan Meridian Gold with mapping
and 256mb SD memory card. Using velcro we fastened the Meridian Gold swivel
mount. Our route was well planned and with the screen on dim we had a good
visual on the course line, the buoys and the contours of the land. This way
we tacked our way and made VMG on the course line avoiding fixed makings and
sailing toward home port in zero visibility. By zero visibility I mean
unable to see the bow of my sailboat with no stars in sight
We got home at about 03:00 (am) the sails were all wet from the heavy fog.
The next day Bruce made a print out ( on his PC) of all 415 tack waypoints
and a color chart showing out tracking . I am very impressed with the
Meridian Gold. The heavy fog did not affect the functioning of the GPS.
The Meridian Gold is waterproof as per MIL STD. The only improvement will be
to have a USB connection in lieu of the 9 pins serial port. A build in
charger with lithium ion battery. I am glad I purchased this model.

"Rick" wrote in message
...
Chris wrote:
Hi there,

does anyone have recommendations
which handheld GPS to get?

Any reason to prefer a specific brand,
features I should be looking for, etc.?

Thanks a lot,

Chris

With out a doubt the Garmin 76CS. It is waterproof and has enough
memory to store a lot of maps.

rick