Phantom,
If you don't have marine mode then you'll just have to use car mode. If it's similar to the Nuvi 350 it's not ideal but depending on how you use it it might be okay for your needs. For $10, it's worth a shot.
You will need to physically check the lake chart in the setup and most likely un-check Garmin City Navigator while you're on the lake. Just reset the maps when you get back on the road. You won't mess up anything.
Dave,
It doesn't sound to me like you ever used the Garmin chart once you installed it.
I have both a Nuvi 350 and a recently acquired Nuvi 500. I tried both the Bizer and Garmin charts on the 350 but only the Garmin chart on the 500. If you are going out on the lake make sure that the lake chart is checked or you will not see the lake features. It does not sound to me like you did this. I believe with the 500 both can be checked but with the 350 you will need to un-check the road map in order to see the marine chart.
As I stated in a
previous post the Nuvi 350 does not have a marine mode, which made Bizer's chart rather difficult to use. I was told by both Garmin and Bizer that the issue was with the Garmin hardware because it did not support a marine mode, but the bottom line is that Bizer's chart would not differentiate the
buoy colors, making it fairly useless IMO. I then went out and bought the $10 Garmin chart, again for the 350, and found that it was slightly better because it showed the buoys as
black and white. Not ideal, but usable. To be fair, the screen shot of Bizer's chart is an older version and may not depict what it would look like in the latest rev.
As for the Nuvi 500, the $10 Garmin chart works just fine in boating mode. Now that I have set it up when I get on the water it asks me if I want to switch to boating mode and visa versa when I get back on dry land. The colors work great (sorry, I don't have a screen shot), it does show safe routes through many of the main passages. You can leave breadcrumbs in either car mode or marine mode and then save them as favorites to be used later. I don't recall how well either depicted depth contours so I can't really comment on that.
Now, I pretty much know my way around on the lake in daylight so as long as the gps can show me where I am on the lake at night that's all I thought I'd really care about. It turns out though that the breadcrumb feature can come in pretty handy. The only time I used the 500 this summer was in early September just before I pulled the boat. I set the trip log (Breadcrumbs) as I left my dock and went to Meredith for dinner and saved the route when I got there. On the way back that night I followed the saved route. The only time I felt as though I really needed the gps in this case was through the buoys by spindle point to the north of Eagle island. Normally I would need to slow it down and take out the spot light to get through them safely.
I'm sure Bizer's would do just as well, maybe better, for how I use it but I'm kinda liking the $10 price tag for the Garmin.