Boat GPS

I new to boating and have hit a few rocks and dinged my prop. My question is would a boat gps like a hummingbird helix 5 be helpful to show me the depth of the water surrounding me so I know where to travel?I see guys hauling on the river and they don’t seem to be concerned about hitting rocks or stumps. I’m a little hesitant on driving my boat fast enough so it stays on plane as I’m concerned with hitting something. Would a boat gps be what I’d need?

pc9460 said:

I new to boating and have hit a few rocks and dinged my prop. My question is would a boat gps like a hummingbird helix 5 be helpful to show me the depth of the water surrounding me so I know where to travel?I see guys hauling on the river and they don’t seem to be concerned about hitting rocks or stumps. I’m a little hesitant on driving my boat fast enough so it stays on plane as I’m concerned with hitting something. Would a boat gps be what I’d need?

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A GPS chartplotter will show the contours and main channel of the body of water, as well as your bearing and location. They're expensive though.

If you have a smartphone, you can buy the Navionics app for 10 bucks and it will function as a basic chartplotter.

On a river I doubt if a GPS will help that much, unless it shows rocks! Best thing to do is just learn how to run the river and where you need to be to avoid damaging a prop. I dinged a few props learning where I needed to be on a local river, a jet pretty well cured that problem.

Having a fish finder for depth information will help. Caution and experience will help the most. Spending big money (for river running) on a down only fish-finder is a waste of money, in my opinion. I would love to have one of those 360 imaging ones. My suggestions would be:
Get a basic fish finder
Go slow and learn your river
Check out a river style prop guard (something like Mac’s Prop Savers River Runner)
A GPS can help you follow your previous route and mark bad spots.
Go to google earth historical images and check out your river in a drought year.
Get an outboard jet. :wink:

It's going to be hard to get river contour information, unless it's the arm of a lake. River bottoms change too much and you have random rocks and submerged trees. River running is a burn and learn process. #-o

I agree that the best way to learn a river is to just run it a lot. A big thing that I have learned is to check water.weather.gov to see the river stage every time before I head out. You get to learn where you should and shouldn't go at different levels. You will gain the experience needed when you know how the river is at a certain stage. I run the Mississippi, where there is gauges on each pool, so I'm not sure if this info will be relevant or not in your area.

Take a free look and see if your river is covered.

www.navionics.com go to Chart Viewer

It is free.

I use a Helix 5 for my chartplotter with a Navionics Hotmaps Platinum East card and it doesn't have charts for the inland rivers around here. Not even the largest which is the Connecticut River.

Ok thanks for the input. I was under the impression the gps would show me the travel route that I should stick to. Should I be concerned about damaging my hull if I run my boat on plane or is the prop or skeg mainly the only thing that would get damaged if I hit an under water stump or rock?

pc9460 said:

Ok thanks for the input. I was under the impression the gps would show me the travel route that I should stick to. Should I be concerned about damaging my hull if I run my boat on plane or is the prop or skeg mainly the only thing that would get damaged if I hit an under water stump or rock?

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Depending on what you hit and how far under the surface you can damage anything under the surface including denting or tearing a hole in your hull. Also if you are running fast enough and hit something solid you can stop the boat like hitting a wall and even injure yourself or a passenger or throw them out of the boat.

Take your time and go slow until you learn where the safe channels for navigation are. Some rivers every sector will call for changing to or from the middle to one side or the other to run the best channel through that sector.

If you could find someone that knew the sectors you would be running well and either they would go out with you or you could ride with them to show you the safe passages that would be even better.

Always use caution on a river as due to the current or recent high water incidents a river can change and a tree or log may be under the surface in a place that was clear passage the last time you went out.

Thanks for the valuable input guys. I am thinking of getting a hummingbird helix with gps as it can record my tracks on the water correct? Is it possible to delete saved tracks/modify them? Is the DI or SI worth it as you can imagine I have no experience with them. Would mount next to where I sit and maybe when I upgrade boats use it at the console or bow

Most Ff/GPS can track and delete your tracks easily. My 587/798 Hummingbirds can.

pc9460 said:

Thanks for the valuable input guys. I am thinking of getting a hummingbird helix with gps as it can record my tracks on the water correct? Is it possible to delete saved tracks/modify them? Is the DI or SI worth it as you can imagine I have no experience with them. Would mount next to where I sit and maybe when I upgrade boats use it at the console or bow

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A $100 Garmin Striker 4 will show your track and mark waypoints. Any unit that has even basic GPS capability should be able to save your track and clear it.

SI is great. I could live without DI, but some guys use it almost exclusively.

I haven't used tracks as recommended above and they seem a decent method, especially if you can annotate depths and honey holes along the tracks. Not having used them, I wonder if tracks can be shared between fishermen? Seems a good way to get good information if you trust the other skipper(s)

Anyway, I used to yearly go down to the Florida keys in the "Hawks Channel" always to or from at night. I set waypoints on my LORAN (using a TD overlay lined map... Dating myself I guess) to the center of the channel and after that was able to navigate without issues at night and not rely totally on the infrequent channel markers holding a heavy spotlight.

I would do the same on a deeper river but if you have sandbar / shoaling or land / shore contour changes I'd check my waypoints and depths more often and as it was said above, run it a lot.

Dating yourself.... "my LORAN (using a TD overlay lined map... Dating myself I guess)"

LongRangeAid-to-Navigation. TD = Time/Distance Yes, you ARE dating yourself. I thought I was the only old fart on this board who used one of those things.

Sure was High Cotton when I had it though!

Imagine, knowing where you were without using a sextant (which I never learned how to use).

Thanks for bringing back old, good, memories.
rich

richg99 said:

Dating yourself.... "my LORAN (using a TD overlay lined map... Dating myself I guess)"

LongRangeAid-to-Navigation. TD = Time/Distance Yes, you ARE dating yourself. I thought I was the only old fart on this board who used one of those things.

Sure was High Cotton when I had it though!

Imagine, knowing where you were without using a sextant (which I never learned how to use).

Thanks for bringing back old, good, memories.
rich

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Hey now, I'm not an antique and I used Loran a lot on the family sailboat growing up. And I remember when I got my first GPS in the early days... it was like a whole new world.

Ha ha... I STILL prefer LORAN because I could look at a maps TD's and know where I am or where I want to go. Not so with Lat/Lon. I miss LORAN :-(