[welshwind]

Amen to your last statement. I was prepared to give our new boat one summer without a bow thruster (it is nine feet longer than our old boat ... no two-footitis for us!) to see what it was like. But my wife came into a little money and decided she wanted to put it towards a bow thruster now ... she just feels a lot more comfortable that the two of us old folk will be able to handle docking the new boat better with it than without it and that takes a lot of stress off her. And that's a good thing because we all know 'when momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy' ... so make her happy.

(ours is not an external bow thruster, so I can't comment on that).