Sea kayaking with a GPS

I recently purchased a Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx for use as both an in-car unit and a sea kayaking navigation aid. While navigation on the current routes I'm doing in pretty easy (essenitally, keep the land on left while heading north), its good to track the speed I'm paddling and get a good handle on distance to go. Mounting the GPS on the kayak was something that I was initially concerned about, but last Sunday I did the 40km paddle from Yowie Bay in the Port Hacking to Watsons Bay in Sydney Harbour with the GPS unit mounted to the front of the kayak using the auto suction-cup mount with good results.

The conditions on Sunday where pretty calm (more details here), but a few waves did come over the front of the kayak without causing any movement or loosening of the suction cup. The suction cup gives quite a strong connection, and its is possible to take most of the 25kg-plus weight of the loaded kayak without having the suction cup detached. This is the basic set-up


I wrapped the unit in a medium zip-lock bag and electical taped the bag to the mount. The 60Csx is water-resistant to IPX7 standards, but I thought 5+ hours of having salt-water dripped onto the unit from the paddle was going to decrease the life of the unit if not kill it outright. Pulled tight, the zip-lock didn't have too much of an impact on screen visibility, and after the paddle only a few drops had managed to work there way into the bag.

The other precaution against unit damage/loss was a stainless-steel cable clipped to the shock-cord mounts and run through the middle of the mount. The stainless steel cable only cost $12 to make, which is reasonable insurance for the cost of the GPS. The photos below show the details of the cable.





The only thing that I didn't like much about the GPS was the lack of details displayed about coastal landmarks like beach and headland names. The detail is all there in BlueChart maps, and viewing the charts on the desktop using MapSource shows heaps of details. No matter how close I zoomed and where I moved the pointer too, I couldn't get the name of a beach or bay to display on the GPS unit. While that isn't much of a drama with familar areas, it is a significant missing feature if you're in unfamilar waters. The one work-around is to add way-points to prominant locations and download them onto the unit before heading out, which is what I plan to do when I do the paddle down to Kiama in a couple of months.