Mapping your Trip

I usually carry my GPS on my kayak trips. I use the GPS along with the chart to determine my location. During the trip I can see my progress on one of the screens that gives me the total distance, my current speed, moving time, stopped time and average speeds. There is also a track, or cookie trail, that appears on the map screen that shows where I've been. At the end of the trip I can save this track on my GPS.

I use a program on my home computer, Expert GPS, to upload this track information. This program will display the track on a topographical map. I can easily save portions of this map as a piture file. Below is a track of a paddle from the Connecticut River up into Hamburg Cove.

A menu link from this program will show this track on Google Earth. Google Earth will also allow me to save images of this track.

In Google Earth I can zoom into areas that I want to see more detail. The picture below shows the harbor area in Hamburg Cove. From my track it appears that I crossed over (or maybe under) one of the piers. The GPS signals are very accurate but at times they do show some error in the actual track.



Here is a map picture from another trip. This was a trip in Buzzards Bay at the south end of the Cape Cod Canal. Here I broke the track into two legs and added a legend. I "mark up" my map pictures by importing them into MSPaint, making my changes, and then saving the new picture file.

I use the eTrex Legend Cx by Garmin. As you can see its time for me to get a new GPS.

- Brian Cooper, CCK Staff