"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 09 Nov 2006 20:50:36 -0600, Vic Smith
wrote:

This is of some concern to me, since I'm hoping to get good advice
here. I just pulled out of a thread here where I posted a black and
white gov report. It was a written simply in plain English and had a
few simple numbers. That OT thread is over for me and I want to get
back to boating for a bit.
But the response I got from a boater showed he was unable to read it
clearly, and his math increased the costs shown by a factor of 6.
Not naming names here, but I was shocked.
What I'm afraid of is having somebody here recommend, say, a 240 hp
motor when he really means 40 hp, and then the dealer calls me and
says the boat is ready, but it sunk.
Please tell me that was an aberration, and there's nothing to worry
about, and that boaters have more of their senses working when they
talk about boats than they do when talking about other subjects.

What exactly is it you want to know?
BTW, do they have GPS units that talk?

Good question.

Yes they can, but no they don't. How's that for obfuscation?

Allow me to explain. Garmin makes general purpose handheld GPS units
that use audio prompts when you use the Mapsource auto software, but
as far as I know, no with the Bluechart marine software. In other
words, the hardware is there to do it, but the marine software doesn't
support it. As far as I know, and I must confess that I looked into
this a while ago so things may have changed, marine software doesn't
use a speech interface as auto software does.

The reason, as explained to me, is that marine mapping is different
than auto mapping because of how the units are used. Additionally,
marine use is generally different due to other factors like set/drift,
wind, wave and the fact that on open water, you can pretty much go
where you want as long as it's safe.

Now, can you use a chartplotter functions with an audio alarm? Yes.
Will it tell you you are at a waypoint or require some sort of course
correction? Yes. Will it talk to you - not that I know of.

This is crazy talk.