Delorme In Reach for Offshore.

[Tom and Maje]

Absolutely!! We don't have one, but our crew member did, and it was a great help. It doesn't replace an SSB, but I'd get one.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by laika

You can request forecasts from any location by entering the GPS coordinates you'd like. See page 5 http://downloads.ocens.com/downloads...Cast_Setup.pdf

You can piece together a workable weather briefing by requesting wx from various locations. Agreed that it's less than glamorous though.

Good to know as a backup.

I will be in a remote spot this weekend with no other service of any kind so may be a good time to play w that.

[Meanderthal]

Still loving ours. We do ise it for weather forecasting, but not in the expected sense--we use it to communicate with our family weather forecaster on land :-)

[CarlF]

I always carry my Inreach offshore - even on other people's boat.

Better than an EPIRB because it speeds up SAR response by being two way contact to confirm distress (Over 90% of EPIRB activation are false alarms so SAR wastes valuable time calling your friends to see if it might be real). I still carry an EPIRB but would only activate it if I got no response on the Inreach. And an EPIRB should only be used in a Mayday situation. The Inreach is useful in the far more common emergencies that don't rise to Mayday such as medical emergency, equipment failure, and notifying SAR of difficulties but not yet distress.

Better than Sat phone because connection is far more reliable (as no constant connection is required). Have never had the InReach take longer than two minutes to transmit. My old satphone only connected about 70% of the time and dropped mid-call almost 100% of the time.

Better than SSB or Ham: Text messaging is far more reliable and efficient communications than voice. If you can't say it in 160 characters it's not important - just ask anyone under 30. I get my weather from the Inreach system. If bad weather is forecast, I have my son or a professional weather router ashore send me detailed forecasts by multiple InReach messages.

Less worry for family: My Inreach is always on (sits on the chart table). It beeps steadily if any message comes in. Family know they can reach me 24/7 rather than waiting for a daily radio call that may or may not get through.

[Eder]

I've used theGarmin Inreach to stay in touch the last year. I won't leave home without it.Off season i do alot of backwoods stuff on my mountain bie in Western Canada...velcro it to the handlebars and keeps me from getting lost.
Maps are great in the bush, good enough back up on the sailboat. Marine forecasts are easy to put up for 3 days.

[pdxsailordiver]

I'm retired and my wife still works. My wife bought me one and I never go off on an adventure with out it.
I take it backpacking , bike touring , sailing and when I fly someplace. Headed to New Zealand tomorrow for some car camping and backpacking. Everyday I turn on the tracking and she and the kids follow along.
Now she does not worry when I'm out and about and we text each other every morning and evening.
I use the iPhone app makes it easier to text and see maps.

[txg]

Just a short question:

We got a used inReach Explorer SE and now i'm thinking about getting the charging cradle to mount it at the nav station, so the battery is fully charged all the time in case the device is needed in an emergency.

How about the signal strength of this device? Is it capable of getting a satellite connection when mounted below deck on a glassfiber boat?

We had an Inmarsat Isatphone and there it was impossible to get a connection below deck (actually, most of the time it was a serious hassle to get a connection at all, even on deck and pointing the phone at the satellite). But the inReach is Iridium, so things may be different.

[Kelkara]

Originally Posted by txg

How about the signal strength of this device? Is it capable of getting a satellite connection when mounted below deck on a glassfiber boat?

Mine (InReach SE) works when plugged in via USB at the nav station on my boat ... it may have been a bit slower to get the messages sent, but still got the job done.

[a64pilot]

I put mine in a waterproof box and put it in the cockpit.
I drilled a hole for the charging cable in the box and sealed it with hot glue.

[kelbylinn]

I leave mine on the main bridge inside the salon near the front window. I also leave it plugged into a USB port for charging and have had no range issues nor battery issues at all. Farthest out was about 80 miles in the Gulf when making the crossing from Carrabelle, FL down to Bradenton, FL and back

[Eder]

Mine works when at my nav station...also inside my motor home, your mileage may vary.

[txg]

Thanks! So it will get a fixed place in its cradle at the nav station. Much better than another device that bangs around in the cockpit and has to be recharged all the time.

[kelbylinn]

That will work just fine. One of our best investments for safety and for keeping family alerted as to where we are when on the move.

[SFS]

I bought one last year when they were on sale at Defender (before Garmin bought them). I finally used it for the first time last week on a delivery. It worked flawlessly. I had it programmed to send a position report every hour for the 8 to 10 hours each day we were underway, and I shut it down every afternoon after the anchor went down. The people who had access to the mapshare data knew I was turning it off each afternoon, so they did not panic.

I bought it for the truly global coverage. This was a direct result of a really negative experience with the POS called Spot, which I wrote about in post #20 of this thread on CF (and elsewhere):

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...-170569-2.html

[CarlF]

Be sure to use the "Emergency Notes" section in your Garmin Inreach Account . There's no apparent length restriction to this field. I provide a complete description of my vessel, dinghy, liferaft, EPIRB beacon ID's and MMSI.

On each offshore trip, before getting out of internet range, I login to my account with a tablet and add a crew list, route plan with "bail out" options, dates, and shoreside contacts to the Emergency Notes field.

The Garmin rescue center can then forward this information to SAR with my location should I declare an emergency. I also use the comments field in the EPIRB beacon database for my EPIRB but it's very limited in length and cumbersome to update.

While I have an EPIRB (and two PLB's), I'd use the InReach first in an emergency because the two way communication would enable a rescue to start more quickly than with an EPIRB. Over 95% of EPIRB signals are false alarms so hours can be wasted while SAR tries to confirm the situation. Meanwhile the person in distress has no way of knowing if his EPIRB signal was received or when rescue might arrive.

With the Inreach, you get a response in a few minutes from the Garmin rescue center followed by an ongoing dialog with SAR.

Here's an example:

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/ma...urricane-irma/