I think that this "thread" is ahead of its time. Give it a few more years and you can have a good discussion about some gps receivers that are easy to read, small, lightweight, will "update" regularly, and can maintain their battery charge for more than a couple of hours.

But for now, we (catsailors) have some intersting options. I am biased toward the product that I am using. I can clearly declare a couple of reasons that I am partial to this product and neither of these reasons is because I think that it is 'The Best.'

My two reasons are that 1) the company has the best customer service that I have ever seen and 2) that the unit most closely resembles what I would call my "perfect" gps receiver for catamaran sailing.

Garmin is the company and their customer service is so excellent, that I want to work for them. (Not happening when we are thousands of miles apart. Where the heck is "Ole'!thee?"

The other reason is that the Garmin Etrex Legend is about the closest thing, these days, to the perfect gps receiver for me, a serious cat sailor. It is waterproof (jis 7 standard or something like that...you had better expect it to NEARLY be able to keep up to what we can do on cats.)

It is small, has lots of information, can be used outdoors in lots of spray, has a lot of memory, can manage to track my posisions for a long way, makes batteries last long, and fits in the palm of my hand.

It is not perfect and it certainly can not sustain prolonged salt water spray hits, but it can certainly do the trck in most usual catamaraning situations.

I am about to build an arm band mount for my Garmin Etrex. I am going to start with the pouch that Garmin sells. It has a steel belt clip on the back. I intend to build or buy an arm band that will accept this "holster." This should give me a good hiking, sailing mount for my gps while it is recording my tracks.

GARY