I'm going to use mine, for the first time, in three weeks and I would have had the same trouble as you. I too thought that it would automatically take you to your chosen start point (nearest on route) from wherever you are. I haven't made the routes on basecamp yet but will now be extra careful when choosing start points. Having a waypoint near your chosen start point also sounds a good idea.
Yes always worth having a few waypoints in your route, when you activate your route, the Nav V will only give you waypoints as options to go to, shaping points are
not in the list of options.
As Wapping mentioned here earlier if you select the last waypoint in the list, the Nav V will take you there (fastest time if that's the calculation mode) and any set route will be discarded, I have experienced this myself to great pain.
This (choosing the last waypoint) is deemed user error, however to my mind the set should work as most people would expect, you have carefully built and put a route into trip Planner you would believe the Nav V will endeavour and be manufactured for its software to follow it road by road.
To re-calculate (change) a route at any given opportunity is poor software design from Garmin.
Also interesting that Garmin sees routes as "unplanned trips" when actually they are usually extremely well planned, however the software algorithm seems to be built to ignore as soon as, or wherever, possible.
Any how Garmin rant over, if you have a waypoint in there (
close to the beginning of your route) it helps as an option to choose it when activating the route, and for the Nav V to follow the rest of the route including any shaping points after it. Waypoints have priority.
If for example your first waypoint (not the start point) was half way down your route and you have shaping points prior to it when you activate your route and select that first waypoint (because it will be the first option) the shaping points prior to it are ignored and the Nav V builds its route to that waypoint by the calculation mode (i.e. fastest time, shortest dist).
Also if you have say five waypoints and you selected the third, the fist and second waypoints are then ignored (including all shaping points to that third waypoint) and the Nav V will take you straight to the third waypoint by the set calculation mode.
Basically when your selecting a waypoint in your route you are requesting the GPS to take you straight there by the calculation mode so be careful when choosing.