Bobbie: Never heard of the Max Speed Toss Tod mentions. Something new I had never thought of. I have two GPS units. The first I purchased out of curiosity (Garmin GPS 48). The second (Garmin Sounder 168) was based on the experience of the first. The second unit is a GPS/Depthsounder combination unit, with split screen and map overlay of the area. So at a glance, I can tell Depth AND bottom content, Speed over Ground, actual heading, Location, and about 10 other things, depending on what my interest might be at the moment. I do not even turn the unit on when on the local lake. Don't need it. But when I leave my local lake to go to some far off locale like the Chesapeake, sailing waters not familiar to me, it is comforting to be able to "light up" a navaid on the chart's map (could be 5 miles....could be 50 miles...it doesn't matter), hit the goto button and get an instant course heading to take me there. And if I veer off, it gives me heading corrections to get me back on track and at the same time, it will tell me at my current speed how long it's going to take me to get there. If it's 3 hours and I have one hour of daylight left, I know I'll either be sailing in the dark...or I need to fire up the engine. And I have been lost in the fog and lost on a pitch black night not knowing where the shore was. GPS will get you out of those situations. And yes I do carry paper charts, and have generally done the navigation work to know what the original heading should be, but once out of sight of land, using paper and compass, how do you know how much leeway and tides have set you one way or the other? In these conditions, having a GPS means you get a better than world class navigator to ride along with you for not much money. In addition, GPS, in combination with your other instruments, will tell you some other valuable information. Leeway....difference between compass heading and course made good. Tide speed....difference between what your knotmeter is telling you and your speed over ground (assuming the analog knot meter is accurate or is working at all). This particular unit...and several of the newer units for marine use, will also give you tide information. If you can read a chart well enough to figure out Lats & Longs, you can get your GPS coordinates from marine charts. You can also get your exact location from the GPS and plot it on the paper chart. Nothing magic about it, but generally speaking, it's always helpful to know at any given point, exactly where you are. Any GPS....including the add-on software programs for Palm Pilots will tell you map coordinates. As you move up the scale in price, you get more features. It all depends on how much money you have and how much information you want. At the extreme end of price....the units include dozens of features that the average person would not even know what is, let alone ever use or need. In that regard, they are not that much different than calculators. Some do simple math. Others have features only needed by a very few advanced whiz kids. And as you get more features, the level of complication with use goes up. Just realized I'm rambling and thus today's lesson in GPS 101 is concluded for today. :) Howard On 6/5/05 10:33 AM, "htmills@bright.net" <htmills@bright.net> wrote:

Bobbie,

I don't use my GPS a whole lot either; it's more of a just-in-case item.

I've heard rumors that some people like to put a couple of pillows up in the forepeak and then repeatedly toss their gps' up there so as to make the "max speed" give large readouts for later bragging about how fast they were going.