Absolutely it will work on water on your boat. It has marine settings, and the base map package includes many nautical features such as bouys and cans. I used mine for several years while sea kayaking off the coast of Maine. It worked great. However, the Garmin 76CSX has even better marine features, including tide tables for any location. The 76CSX is what I use now on the water.

You can definitely use it in the Southern Hemisphere, no adjustments necessary. The GPS satellites cover the entire earth without focusing on any area in particular, they don't care where you are.

Darlene,

The official specs of the Vista have a temperature range of 5F to 158F (-15C to 70C), but I've used my Vista HCx at colder temperatures than that. Cold temps will make the GPSr take longer to acquire a satellite fix, but it will still work.

This GPSr does have all of the basic features that you would expect. You can track your path, follow the GPSr to a waypoint, etc. That would take care of knowing where you are, how to get back, and how far you've come (just mark your starting point as a waypoint). This GPSr will also tell you your speed on the compass page.

A note: Topographic maps for this GPSr are extra - they can be purchased from Garmin. The Vista does not accept data cards, so you are limited to the 24 MB of internal memory built in. That would probably be enough for most people, but if you're planning on loading a lot of maps, consider a GPSr that will accept memory cards. If you like the Vista interface, the Vista HCx accepts cards (and has a colour screen and some other features).

Good luck choosing!

Mauricio,

As long as the GPSr has a pretty good view of the sky (so that it can get a lock on satellites), it will work. That sounds like a great way to use it!

Jonathan,

I can change the units on my Vista HCx to nautical. So, for Distance/Speed, I can choose (among the metric & imperial units) Nautical (nm, kt, ft) or Nautical (nm, kt, m). I can also change depth to fathoms.

I'm not sure about the Nautical charts.

It comes with 24Mb of memory, a USB download cable, instructions, and a very basic map (no topo map info). In order to get topo maps, you need to buy the Garmin Topo map software. It doesn't come with batteries either. It will work out of the box, but you won't see a map.

That is one of it's most basic features. More advanced ones give distances between points following a certain road instead of in straight line. Most Garmin's have this function. All of the basic Garmin's work on this principle.

It's one of the most basic features. More advanced ones give distances between points following a certain road instead of in straight line. I'm not confident about the traffic ones, but normal handhelds do have this function for sure.Hope this helps.Ignacio gives some good advise, if you get one of those traffic GPS, they are usually "dumbed down" and won't do what you are talking about, point to point. All of the basic hand helds work on this principle.

Its actually waterproof under IPX7, its supposed to mean water resistant to splashes and rain. Also it can be submerged into water at a 1m depth for 30 minutes. But I wouldn't try it. A friend of mine once secured his eTrex to the outside of his drybag to track our progress down a river in Mexico. We didn't down much tracking after the first day. Get a small SealLine Mapcase. For about $20 you can protect your $200 investment.