MOB feature usage/improvements?

remarkov said:

I have a few questions/feature requests regarding the MOB feature which seems underestimated by many users including Garmin devs

It seems to me that you want to abuse the MOB function for your own purposes. The purpose of this function is clearly dedicated to a single purpose. To record the location of a person who has fallen overboard.

MOB = Men over board.

For that, this function works very well, and I see no need to change anything about it. This function is for emergencies where quick action is required. Therefore it should be as easy to use as possible. Any additional feature is counterproductive here.
If you want to save waypoints, there are other features for that.

remarkov said:

The reason why I want to improve the MOB function is simple. I use it as a quickest way to save current location

Why don't you just use the GPS button ?

Interesting.  I nosed around in the file structure a bit and at first glance couldn't find where the MOB location is stored.  It doesn't appear to be in the Lctns file.

bluefish said:

It seems to me that you want to abuse the MOB function for your own purposes. The purpose of this function is clearly dedicated to a single purpose. To record the location of a person who has fallen overboard.

MOB = Men over board.

For that, this function works very well, and I see no need to change anything about it. This function is for emergencies where quick action is required. Therefore it should be as easy to use as possible. Any additional feature is counterproductive here.
If you want to save waypoints, there are other features for that.

I could not agree more!  In an emergency situation it is absolutely necessary to have procedures in place that are consistent and well-practiced so they become second nature.  That is (and has been) the case with the Man Overboard emergency feature.

Please do not change anything about the MOB feature - it is reliable and perfectly useful as is.

HTH

I have to admit you are right, indeed I am abusing this feature for my own purposes and after second thought I agree that the point 3 can be ignored. But the first two are still valid.

1. Deleting the old MOB location is not very important but just a matter of keeping your watch clean of outdated data. Not really important but as I recall in other Garmin products, including marine devices, there are normally ways to clear the MOB location in the menus.
2. This one seems really important to me and is closely related to safety. Imagine you've lost a crew member, activated the MOB on your watch, made a distress call and started searching. After some time you gave up and deactivated the Navigation to MOB to save battery because you know you will need it later. Then someone from the rescue team is asking you to repeat/confirm the MOB position and you were in panic so you did not write it down anywhere except your watch. You now need to activate Navigation again and wait for GPS fix... Which exactly at this moment takes longer then usual for some reason... And you don't actually need the GPS now, you just want to see the MOB coordinates, nothing else! Or later, when you are at home, couple of days later, you are writing a blog post about this incident and want to include the place where it happened or even add a screenshot of you watch with the MOB information which helped you to rescue your team member... But you have to go outside for that.

bluefish said:

Why don't you just use the GPS button ?

That was the first thing I've tried, but as I said:

remarkov said:

I use Walk activity with the GPS setting set to Disabled (as I don't need the track of my walks and want to save battery). But if I want to save some location in the middle of my walk activity I can't just do that, I need to enable GPS for the activity first or completely stop the activity.

And that's why I went the wrong path of abusing MOB feature for that. As I already said, I won't do that anymore for that purpose and hopefully will never use this feature in real life.

Would be great if the manual calls for GPS functions would still work even during an activity that has GPS disabled. I mean I want to disable GPS for an activity, but not for entire watch. Probably I should start another thread for this topic and leave this one for the first two points above.

If we ignore the third point which I already regret that I added in my initial post, the other two points won't change anything in the feature behavior and just make it a bit more useable IMO. I mean for its main purpose, nothing else.

while I strongly agree with the fact that the MOB function has to be as simple and as easy to use as it is now (let's hope that it will work reliable again when the sailing season starts for F7 series), I do see relevance in this point:

remarkov said:

Then someone from the rescue team is asking you to repeat/confirm the MOB position

I actually stumbled upon it during a MOB exercise when I wanted to write the position of the MOB maneuver into the logbook as required while being below deck. No problem, b/o it being an exercise. But radios are below deck as well and when time is most important... yes I see this point.

remarkov said:

couple of days later, you are writing a blog post

Upps, I don't want to be in your shoes when you tell the coast guard that you intended to wait until being home with writing down to position of a real MOB and  in your BLOG of all places. ;-) Jokin' apart, this is required to be written down immediately after the incident into the logbook. Again, yes, I see the point of reading the position of MOB w/o GNSS. But I strongly recommend not to delete a real MOB from your Garmin, you'll need every proof you can get of what happend afterwards. More so I'd see merit in having an automatism which saves the MOB position to another place with a timestamp so you can't overwrite it unintended by pressing the MOB again by stupid accident.

I'm a sailor too, YM Offshore. I did a lot of MOB practice and also I lived on a boat for 3 years non-stop.

I agree my example with the blog post may sound stupid and absolutely imaginary. I'll try to describe the whole story to make it a bit more realistic. The MOB situation happens at sea, you do everything right, throw a dan buoy, do the maneuver properly, call mayday, put the record in logbook etc. In the end you saved the member of your team, all ended well and you happily continued your trip. A few days later you are ashore, sitting in a warm house, finally with an internet connection and decide to download the photos from your camera and write a blog post about your adventures and how you almost lost your best friend. And in that story you want to include the position where exactly the scariest moment of your life occurred. You know you have your record in the logbook but it is on your boat. You know you still have the position in your watch... but you need to go outside just to get the GNSS signal. it is raining outside! I will finish the blog post tomorrow. :)

I agree that deleting a real MOB position from your watch is not something you should do. But what if that was just a test in your garden and you just don't want to see that item in your navigation menu? No big deal though and after second thought I agreed that it is better not to allow users to delete MOB position. Better safe than sorry.

But to be honest, in real life MOB situation, in a rough weather, under great stress, all you will do will be the things that you practice a lot. The last thing you will think of is that your smart watch have this function and it is a great time to press that key combo (do you remember which one?). Of course unless you will start practicing using your watch during the MOB training routine all the time.