Wants verses needs.
West Marine held the grand opening of their new Ft. Lauderdale store this week, and what a grand store it is. Lots and lots of boating stuff, plenty of employees, and lots of giveaways. We entered the contests–didn't win, bought a new grill (a need for us), and walked out of the store with a list of goodies I would like to have.
I've been contemplating a chartplotter. We've done just fine to date with a GPS and paper charts, but it would be nice to have all that information available at the helm. Don't get me wrong, we plan on carrying paper charts, but that will be for backup. As you can probably tell I've pretty much decided on a chartplotter.
The dilemma: I've been planning on spending about $1000.00 for the plotter. West Marine has a Garmin with a five inch screen and sonar capabilities on sale for about $600.00. It's a perfectly acceptable plotter and it's $400.00 below my budget, but I would like a little larger screen.
Then there's the hi-def Garmin with a seven inch screen that called to me the entire time standing in the electronics room. It's a touch screen with pictures of harbors and the ability to set up a track by just touching your departure and arrival locations. As long as you have your mast height and depth programmed in, the plotter does the work for you. Of course even on sale it's twice the price of the other plotter. It's $400.00 over budget plus $150.00 for a chart card if you want to use all of the features.
Here are a few more examples: We want solar panels, but do we really need them? We currently have a small Honda generator that served us fine when we were living on a mooring ball in Key West a few years ago. But even the Honda is noisy and if we could run it less often with solar panels it would be nice.
A new mattress? Ours is almost nine years old and it wasn't that great to begin with. Both Mary and I are discovering new aches and pains on a daily basis. A good mattress might ease the discomfort.
There are many more items on our want vs. need list, but how about you the reader? What's on your want list, and why is it there?
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