GPS on a cruise

[Z'Loth]

Any thoughts of using a GPS unit on a cruise? I'm thinking of getting one for a Mexican cruise to make it easier to get back to the ship should I decide not to take a ship-sponsored tour.

[etoile]

I was delighted to find that the Galaxy makes one of its TV channels a GPS map! You can watch a little icon of the ship traveling over a map of the region you're in. I assume the feed was coming from the bridge but I enjoyed checking it just about every time I went back to my room to see how far we'd gone!

[WKM]

Guys and there gadgets!

Husband took his on our last cruise and I'm sure it will not be the last time. He liked watching where we were going in Alaska. It helped getting us back to the airport when we rented a car in Anchorage. Take it! Have fun!!

[Z'Loth]

Guys and there gadgets!

Yes, I a tech geek, what can I say.

 

I purchased the unit yesterday, and am trying it out now. And, yes, I believe that it should be handy in getting back to the ship as well as determine where we are while the ship sails down.

[RaffinOrganGrinders]

By all means, take a handheld GPS unit. Not only was I able to see our position on our cruise to Hawaii, but speed, direction, overall miles traveled, etc. Never to geeky to have the best toys.

 

George

[CM2J2R2S]

We're taking ours, but we are also hoping to do some geocaching whilst away.

[Slinkiecat]

My husband always takes his GPS on trips, including the recent cruise we took to Nassau and it was interesting to check on when we were at sea for a whole day coming back. Between watching the NFL football game and checking the GPS we spent the afternoon onboard pleasantly.

 

I'm still trying to figure out what people like about days at sea. Maybe I'll figure it out during the next cruise where we will have at times four days in a row without a stop. You can bet we'll have the GPS along, as well as our laptops.

 

Slinkie

[Destiny99]

I am planning on bringing my Pocket PC for which I have a Bluetooth GPS locator, on our upcoming cruise to Panama, Costa Rica and Belize.

 

I use MS Streets and Trips and Mapopolis for local routing information and I am having a great deal of trouble finding mapping software for Central America.

 

I too would like to be able to track the ship's route and see where we are.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions as to mapping software with maps of Central America and the Caribbean that I can use with my equipment.

 

Any Help would be appreciated !!:cool:

[bUU]

I haven't found any maps for my Garmin that I consider affordable. I have WorldMap and that's it (for outside the Continental US). Very low-res and very inaccurate.

[Destiny99]

I downloaded Pocket Earth for mine, sounds like it might be similar to your world map. It's just a map of the world that will show you your position, speed and direction, but like you say, is low res and does not zoom in very close, would be hard to identify small islands if at all !!

 

Still looking, hoping I'll run across something that will work !

[scuba dad]

I haven't found any maps for my Garmin that I consider affordable. I have WorldMap and that's it (for outside the Continental US). Very low-res and very inaccurate.

I tried to find maps for my Garmin and could not.

 

I just got back from a 10 day cruise and just used the tracking feature to help walk back to the ship. It was not a detailed map, but kept me going in the right direction.

[Teriyaki]

Last summer we took a 11 night RCCI cruise out of Balitmore. We had a balcony cabin and I kept the Meridian Color GPS on virtually all the time. I had two sets of rechargeable batteries, so I was chargin one set all the time. I charted the entire trip, or 4,427 miles, including shore excursions.

 

I used the maps and logged tracks to import into our video after the cruise to show each stop during the video.

 

I plan to do the same on the Zuiderdam this May.

 

Maximum Geek:p

 

Countdown to Zuiderdam on May 28<BR>

[nat9511]

My husband took his on our 14 day cruise on the Zenith last year. A lot of passengers kept coming up to him calling him "captain" and asking where the ship was now and how far do we have to go etc. He had a lot of fun with it.

[bUU]

This is really good news. We got absolutely no reception in our Deck 2 outside stateroom on Majesty of the Seas, but we've got a Deck 9 balcony on Serenade of the Seas this time, so we'll give it another try. I've got all the port waypoints entered, based on either geocache info or actual records of the port itself.

[setsail]

Bicker, my ds brought his garmin on our recent cruise and it worked great. I asked him about the maps and he said he just downloaded from his pc with the program he got with the gps. He had a balcony on deck 8 and in thye room sometimes the reception was iffy so he just strapped the unit to the deck chair at night and it worked great. It was funny because our ports were close together and we wondered what the ship was going to do at night. Well we went to this talk (q&a) by the captain and cheif engineer and they bth talked about how much fuel the ship used so we were prepaired and asked them why they spent all night doing circles and zigzags instead of just sailing to the next port(showed them the gps) and you should have heard all the excuses they made.

[mrios1]

I know, it dsnt sound like it be something you might not wanna try, but, it's reaally interesting in the middle of the ocean what you can hear on those things from the top deck.. I picked up radio Cuba once and Country Cayman.I got a kick out of that being from Texas..Also, dont forget the walkie-talkies and the domino's..we played chicken foot every night an knocked out 2 bottles of wine while we did it..Have fun !!! Marty

[WriterOnDeck]

Hey, why not! I bought a handheld GPS about 12 years ago (one of the first hand-held units) and won the "how far will we sail contest", almost paying for my GPS! I figured it wasn't cheating because you had to submit your guess quite a while before point at which the miles were measured. I figured my best range with the GPS, and several of the miles within the range were already taken. But I can see why they don't do those contests anymore!

 

As I recall, a GPS at the time was about $600, so it was a good thing!

[scapel]

By all means, take a handheld GPS unit. Not only was I able to see our position on our cruise to Hawaii, but speed, direction, overall miles traveled, etc. Never to geeky to have the best toys.

 

George

George,

How much are these little gadgets and where would you suggest to get one?

[scapel]

By all means, take a handheld GPS unit. Not only was I able to see our position on our cruise to Hawaii, but speed, direction, overall miles traveled, etc. Never to geeky to have the best toys.

 

George

George,

 

How do they work connected to a computer? Wht about the Palm? Where do learn how to buy the best kind, and how they work? What do you have to do them to make them work?

[melkan]

George,

 

How do they work connected to a computer? Wht about the Palm? Where do learn how to buy the best kind, and how they work? What do you have to do them to make them work?

 

Check out http://gpsinformation.net/ They have a wealth of knowledge and good reviews.

 

There are two main brands of GPS - Garmin and Magellan. I have a Magellan Meridian Gold that I really like. I can hook it up to my laptop and track my position using MapPoint software from Microsoft. I can also download maps of the US or Europe directly into the GPS using MapSend.

 

If you do a lot of travelling, once you get one you'll wonder how you got along without it.

 

Chris

[scapel]

Thanks for the info.

Joe

[helpme]

We have a Magellan which plugs into the cigarette lighter in the car, we are from Canada and are off to Hawaii shortly we were thinking of taking it with us so we can use it in the rental cars on the islands. Is there a particular website we have to use to download the islands of Hawaii.

[Smooze]

We're taking ours, but we are also hoping to do some geocaching whilst away.

 

 

Have you guys done any caching while on the islands or is it just something you would like to try to squeeze in? A friend of mine and I do geocaching and have often joked about caching while on an island but have never done it. Was wondering with the time restraints how hard it might be to do.

[Howling/Pepper Chef]

I am going to give geocaching a shot in cozumel. My meriplat is loaded with a few virts and a few caches. I also plan on doing some caching in jamica.

For more information about geocaching visit Here.

My wife thinks I am crazy for caching on cozumel but I am really excited to go. Only 5 more days!!:)

[Smooze]

I am going to give geocaching a shot in cozumel. My meriplat is loaded with a few virts and a few caches. I also plan on doing some caching in jamica.

For more information about geocaching visit Here.

My wife thinks I am crazy for caching on cozumel but I am really excited to go. Only 5 more days!!:)

 

 

LOL sounds fun to me :) You'll have to let us know how the caching goes!