Losing GPS during my cold water swims

Has anyone else had this problem and do I need to do anything to my Open Water Settings? 

The temperature did not get that cold where I swam, so cannot help with that one. However, the reactivity of the GPS while the hand is above surface is variable. It is related also to the time the watch spends above the surface, so perhaps if your swim style changes a bit in the cold water, it may be the culprit. What helps a bit, is enabling the option GPS+Galilleo - it gives the watch more satellites to connect to, hence a bit faster reaction, when it moves above the water. Also make sure to update the EPO file regularly. It is safer doing it over the USB cable and Garmin Express before you go out, since typically the watch has no connectivity to Garmin Connect on the phone, when you do the OW swimming.

What I do, when I see the watch stopped adding the distance due to the bad GPS signal, is stopping and raising the hand above the surface untill it gets again good GPS lock. And when I swim breststroke, I keep the watch under my swim cap.

I might be a bit late to the party on this one, but I’ve been having similar sounding issues with my Fenix 6 Pro. The GPS cuts out after 2 minutes while swimming in cold water. This mainly happens in water between 8 and 15 degrees C (and presumably colder, but where I live the ocean doesn’t get colder). Usually the GPS is able to regain the signal after a minute or two, and obviously immediately if I realize, stop swimming and hold the watch out of the water.

However, I discovered a trick. Immediately before starting your swim, simply cool down your watch for a couple minutes in the lake/ocean.

My current strategy is:

- Add “temperature” to one of your Swim app’s display screens.

- Next, activate the Swim app (don’t start the activity) and allow the watch to get a GPS signal. Meanwhile, scroll to the display screen that has the temperature displayed.

- Hold your watch underwater to cool it down. Keep an eye on the temperature on the display screen. For me, the GPS loss was happening consistently at the 2-minute mark, so I hold the watch underwater for 2 minutes. If the display screen can also show you the “time of day with seconds” that might help so you don’t have to count 120 seconds in your head! After a couple minutes, the watch is pretty well fully cooled down. Of course, because the watch is underwater, the GPS signal has been lost…

- Hold the watch out of the water to let it regain the GPS signal (and hopefully do so quickly enough so the watch doesn’t warm back up significantly) and as soon as GPS signal is locked, press start and swim!

Unfortunately this does mean you are standing around in very cold water for 2 minutes. If this method works for you, maybe try experimenting with shorter cooling times - maybe a full 2 minutes isn’t necessary.

I have opened a new topic on this issue for the Fenix 6 here:

forums.garmin.com/.../gps-signal-lost-during-open-water-swim-in-cold-water-after-approx-2-minutes