Can you use a combination of navigation and Apnea Hunt mode?

Hi,
I am looking at changing from Suunto D4i to the Descent MK1. I am hoping that I can use the watch to navigate to spots / record new spots while swimming on the surface during freediving / Spearfishing sessions, and have the watch record dives / give stats on depth and time. Will it cope with flipping between modes with this up down type activity. Surface time is typically 2 minute with dive durations of 70 to 90 seconds?

Thanks!

  • I have not used the Descent for Freediving, but in Scuba you can do this with some limitations. I would be surprised if it works differently in APNEA mode.

    - You must end the dive and exit dive mode to return to Navigation mode. Note that once the Descent is in Dive mode there is no way to exit this mode, you must wait for the watch to time out and end the dive. So set the end of dive timeout to 1 minute.

    - If you are in Nav Mode and start a dive without exiting this mode, the Descent will not start dive mode until you do exit Nav. 

    Garmin has no prioritization of modes, so whatever mode is running is the highest priority. This has come up before and Garmin has never responded to user feedback on this. Well Garmin never really responds to any user feedback, so your guess is as good as mine as to what they will do. Given the glacial pace of software updates for the Descent and the upcoming release of a new model, I suspect updates will only be to address safety issues at this point. 

  • So set the end of dive timeout to 1 minute.

    Setting it to 20 seconds (the minimum) would be better.

  • LOL, I set it to 10 minutes so I do not have 10 dives every time I take students out and was not sure what the minimum was.....