Miss Daisy, I've used my Garmin 38...
hand held now for several years and have always been impressed by its performance. Then the family got me a 178C this past summer, with external antenna and sonar transducer. I really like the data card feature because I can store all the charts for my region (150) from the south end of Puget Sound to the north end of the Strait of Georgia. I bought the 32 meg data card (they have them up to 128 meg)_so that I can store two regions if I want. I bought the data card reader so that I can transfer all the charts from the CD to the card. The card reader and card came from an e-bay distributor costing much less than from WM or Garmin direct. Normally, I build my route and waypoints the night before at the nav station so that I'm ready to go in the morning. After I build the route I track it to make sure of a clear way. I think you will be happy with the 238. If you have an autopilot it is especially nice to let the Garmin feed route instructions to your course computer all while you watch technolgy do its thing. Bud
