Your dealer is right, all the Garmins have battery compartments that are not
waterproof. At least for the GPS-76 series though, the rest is REALLY
waterproof. My experience is that you get a little water in the battery
compartment, but the thing keeps working after being dunked. Especially if
sal****er is involved, you need to clean it out later and get a little rust
preventative in there. No big deal though.


"suds" sudsysadie@hawaii{is the #1 state for Spam eaters}.rr.com wrote in
message ...
Hi,

I've got a question about using a handheld GPS on a kayak but first allow
me
to introduce myself.

I've been lurking here for a couple of months. My wife and I are avid
scuba
divers. A year ago we had the incredible misfortune of being stranded on
Oahu while between jobs. Now we are here until we retire. Tough, huh?
So
we learn to surf and keep up the diving but it gets rather old going to
the
same spots on a crowded, tourist filled, cattle boat every weekend. While
on a trip to the Big Island, we take a kayak tour of the Kona Coast and it
immediately occurs to both of us that a kayak is a fantastic way to go
diving. To make a long story short, we bought a couple of used kayaks and
have started diving from them. It's great fun.

Now my question. The manual for my handheld GPS (a Garmin 12
http://www.garmin.com/products/gps12/ ) says that it's waterproof. That's
great because I have the swivel mount for it and would really like to
secure it to my kayak in such a manner that it will always be positioned
in
front of me while paddling. This will be very beneficial when finding
those
dive spots offshore. However, my local kayak expert insists that if I
don't
keep it in a waterproof bag, I'll regret it. He says the electronics are
waterproof but the battery housing is not. I've had to replace enough
dive
lights to understand what that means. But to place the unit in a
waterproof
bag will mean that it will again be handheld and far more difficult to use
in open water. Has anyone else worked through this situation? What is
the
solution?


suds