The older Map76, Map76S, Map176C etc. all had an anchor drag alarm that
persisted until acknowledged. The new 76CSx and 60CSx anchor drag alarm
beeps only once, and that's it. As you will likely not be at the helm
or Nav station at such a time, this "improvement" renders these newer
units effectively useless for this specific role.


Garmin seems to recognize the need for a more persistant alarm with the
older products, why have they stepped backwards with the newer
products???

Because most people don't make use of this function. When anchored in
deep water, because of line stretch and movement of the boat due to
wind and tide changes, this was a useless function for many people.

You must be kidding!

I've lived at anchor most of the time for the last five years, often in
very deep water, and I get great peace of mind from the anchor watch on
my Furuno GP-31. I use the plotter function to see where I dropped the
anchor and then put set a go to cursor point there. The plotter draws
a nice swing arc or circle and the alarm tells me when I move outside
the circle... I dragged anchor three times in five years and the alarm
told me about it each time. Works great in anchorages up to 150' deep
with wind and tide -- been there. Maybe Garmin's function is different
from Furuno's...

-- Tom.

Capt John wrote:
Because most people don't make use of this function. When anchored in
deep water, because of line stretch and movement of the boat due to
wind and tide changes, this was a useless function for many people.

It is certainly NOT useless to me! And it is a feature that was more
functional on the older models than the new ones. A simple software
change could fix that. The anchor drag limit can easily be adjusted for
whatever water depth, and scope you choose. That doesn't make it
useless by any means.

Capt John wrote:
Because most people don't make use of this function. When anchored in
deep water, because of line stretch and movement of the boat due to
wind and tide changes, this was a useless function for many people.

It is certainly NOT useless to me! And it is a feature that was more
functional on the older models than the new ones. A simple software
change could fix that. The anchor drag limit can easily be adjusted for
whatever water depth, and scope you choose. That doesn't make it
useless by any means.

Works great for me. Sleep with the d**n near my bunk when the wind kicks
up. Waking up and maybe feeling uneasy...just reach over my head and grab
it, have a look. A nice little arc with no long lines, lets me know I'm
still where I should be...back to sleep. Mine's a Garmin 76...new in 2005.
My alarm is very functional but you need to dig into the options to adjust
the alarm value based on your scope etc. The alarm is more than enough to
wake me.

Glenn.

"Viper" wrote in message
oups.com...



The older Map76, Map76S, Map176C etc. all had an anchor drag alarm that
persisted until acknowledged. The new 76CSx and 60CSx anchor drag alarm
beeps only once, and that's it. As you will likely not be at the helm
or Nav station at such a time, this "improvement" renders these newer
units effectively useless for this specific role.


Garmin seems to recognize the need for a more persistant alarm with the
older products, why have they stepped backwards with the newer
products???

Because most people don't make use of this function. When anchored in
deep water, because of line stretch and movement of the boat due to
wind and tide changes, this was a useless function for many people.

My older Garmin 75 has a setting for distance allowed before alarm. So
stretch and swing can be considered.

Viper wrote:
The older Map76, Map76S, Map176C etc. all had an anchor drag alarm that
persisted until acknowledged. The new 76CSx and 60CSx anchor drag alarm
beeps only once, and that's it. As you will likely not be at the helm
or Nav station at such a time, this "improvement" renders these newer
units effectively useless for this specific role.


Garmin seems to recognize the need for a more persistant alarm with the
older products, why have they stepped backwards with the newer
products???

just thinking out loud ... i bet it wouldn't be hard to make one of
these things, an anchor alarm i mean. for someone with any kind of
programming experience it seems like it would be fairly trivial to
build one ... just grab the data coming in from the GPS unit, the
serial stream, parse it, convert the location to something you can
easilly do math with, then do some simple "am i inside the circle" type
of math. then you could do whatever you wanted, set it to whatever
distance you want, have it set off whatever alarm is going to actually
alert you, etc, if your boat was on the net your pc could even send you
an email or a text message to let you know that you were outside your
anchor's scope. it seems so easy, in fact, that i am guessing that a
lot of gps map software has the feature built in, though i don't know
that to be true.

You're right the programming is easy, but keeping a computer running
24/7 is hard for those of us not in the genset crowd.

Tom.

Here, Here! Set the anchor well...lots of scope and listen to
weather....maybe not sleep too sound when the wind blows.

Glenn.

s/v Seawing
www.seawing.net


wrote in message
ups.com...
You're right the programming is easy, but keeping a computer running
24/7 is hard for those of us not in the genset crowd.

Tom.