haasemonkey

So my brother wants to get into geocaching after I told him all about it. He also wants to use the GPS while he windsurfs to log his tracks and record his speeds. I was wondering if anyone could recommend a GPS unit that would be great for geocaching and might be waterproof for windsurfing. I suppose if the GPS unit were somehow mounted on the board it wouldnt be submersed too much but would definitely get wet. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Eric

It's accurate to about one or two city blocks most of the time- it really depends where you are. I'm in an urban environment, so I imagine it's likely to be more accurate since there are more cell towers in a city. Sometimes it even more accurate and gets almost my exact location. (I'm using the iPhone by the way). It can update in about 4 or 5 seconds, so if you're willing to manually refresh it I suppose you could use it to help with driving directions. It's probably good for an occasional check if you feel like youve missed a turn. I would recommend pulling over before doing this though. To know where I am though, I usually just look at the driving directions map segment and the street signs.

So I've got a Garmin Venture HC and have been using it for geocaching, which has been awesome! It has the basemap on there but I'd like either a Topo map or a city street map. I downloaded the new Garmin Bobcat software for Mac OSX and can see that it's possible to edit waypoints, etc and transfer them to and from the GPS. A few questions: 1. Do I have to buy the $100+ maps from Garmin to put them on the Venture? 2. Which map is which? There are several options and Garmin's website is terrible in explaining what is what and can be used with which GPS. 3. Are there any free public maps (especially of the SoCal area)? 4. How would I put a Garmin or free public map on my GPS with my Mac? (I don't have a Windows machine to convert maps). All in all, I find Garmin's software to be poorly designed (both on the GPS unit and on the computer) and their website to be pretty awful as well. Dealing with the GPS files has taken some extensive research- I finally found apps for the Mac for geocaching and transferring GPX data to and from Google Earth and MotionBased. Thanks in advance for any help.