Best emergency positioning and tracking device.

Hi,

Looking for a device that will track me that others can follow. DeLorme, Spot, whatever....

What are the good ones and the prices?

Thanks

Try AIS.

Ais.

I find a SPOT works very well for that.

AIS will not do what you seem to want to do unless you always stay in an area with good voluntary AIS reporting/tracking. Which would be pretty limiting.

The best emergency positioning device is still the EPIRB, but it must be properly set up, positioned and maintained.

The best tracking device is currently the Delorm Inreach, but...

We have recently had the unit freeze up, requiring a factory reset. It also occurred once last year. This action requires a firmware update and internet, which is a MAJOR PITA if you are in the middle of nowhere.

JDCAVE said:

The best emergency positioning device is still the EPIRB, but it must be properly set up, positioned and maintained.

The best tracking device is currently the Delorm Inreach, but...

We have recently had the unit freeze up, requiring a factory reset. It also occurred once last year. This action requires a firmware update and internet, which is a MAJOR PITA if you are in the middle of nowhere.

Click to expand...

The Inreach looks good. What service do you have? Looks like that survival would do but what's a tracking point and location pin? If thats every time you send a location, it would be brutally expensive.

And Spot is only one way communication.

Why can't a cell phone tracker of some kind work for just following friends?

Seevee said:

The Inreach looks good. What service do you have? Looks like that survival would do but what's a tracking point and location pin? If thats every time you send a location, it would be brutally expensive.

And Spot is only one way communication.

Why can't a cell phone tracker of some kind work for just following friends?

Click to expand...

The plan varies, depending on whether we have cell service or not but I like to drop down a tracking point every 20 minutes when travelling. When we won't have cell service for weeks at a time, we go with the unlimited plan for $75 (Cdn) a month. We send and receive a lot of texts. The admiral wants to stay in touch with the family.

Jim

See,
I have used "Share location" function in Google maps on my Android phone to share/keep track of locations on land, works fine for that. Haven't tried it on water, should work fine. Of course it will not function out of cell coverage area, so if you go offshore something else would be needed.

EPIRB and waterproof/floating VHF for emergency. I do not count on my cell phone working in an emergency/wet situation.

I would NOT recommend the SPOT. We have it and the device turns itself off if we pause for a bridge opening or a lock. The customer service is terrible.

I would buy a Garmin/Delorme Inreach.

AIS is often delayed, and has no way to send an emergency message. I love my AIS for other things but not for this use case.

PLB and EPIRB should also be considered.

We have both AIS and InReach. If I had to to pick one to allow following of your boat, it would be InReach. We've used it since it came out and the reliability is bullet proof.

After AIS (must have IMO), go with Inreach. We've tried Spot, etc. Inreach is much better.

I have Spot and it has worked very well for us over the past year. It doesn't provide two-way communication, but that makes it MUCH cheaper than Inreach.

I'm a very cheap guy and hate to spend money however.