Based on a few threads of missing vessels and vessels having to be abandoned, neither of which has to my knowledge ever been heard from again, had me a little worried.
I initially believed
AIS would be the salvation if my
boat went walkabout, or if we ever had to leave her, however
AIS has turned out to not be as useful as I had hoped. So I started thinking about a tracker, trucks and containers are tracked world wide, so why can't a
boat be?
Being that
Garmin had just bought out Delorme, I waited until the
Garmin product was available. Initial thought was to put it in a waterproof box in the
cockpit but plugged into a 12 VDC source to keep it charged, that way it is out in the open, protected and continually charged.
However, it seems to
work fine on my chart table down below, it sends and receives messages via
satellite, receives
GPS and transmits successfully track data.
Interestingly by comparison, the
phone I used to carry a Motorola 9500, would never have worked below
deck.
Also it is too early to say it will always
work below
deck, nor can we say because it works under my deck, that it will work under all decks. There is no
wood in my deck for example.