Last week, I had a little mishap. I was out crabbing with my family, when I suddenly noticed our boat was taking on water! We immediately pulled up our crabbing lines and we were able to drive to a close by abandoned dock. Once we were there, I called for help. I provided Sea Tow with the coordinates of my location that was on my Garmin GPS. To make a long story short, thankfully, we were towed in and were all safe back on dry land. It sure was a scary experience!
However, the techie side of me wanted to use my smartphone and Google Maps to figure out my exact location of where I was stranded on my boat. It was not as obvious as I would have thought.
So this is what I did:
- First, make sure the GPS setting is turned on on your smartphone. I have a Samsung S4 smartphone.
- Next, open up Maps on your smartphone, (Google Maps).
- Once the map shows where you are, zoom in on your location.
- Tap and hold down the blue arrow or blue circle which indicates your vehicle or location. (You should get prompt for a dropped pin)
- Tap the location that it found, or the term 'dropped pin'
- Tap, 'Share', 'Gmail' to send the email to yourself. This will send you an email with a link to a Google Map of your location.
- Open up your email, click on the link and you will go to a Google Map that displays your location and coordinates. The coordinates will be displayed in the browser tab, and on the dropped pin on the map.