Regarding: SoZ is equipped with an interface between the NavStar DGPS, the autopilot and the NobelTek Visual Navigation Suite. Our rhumbline between waypoints was easy to follow (467 miles long on one leg) and the systems worked perfectly. I can't remember more than a couple of instances when we were more than two boat lengths off the rhumbline. As we approached each waypoint, an alarm would alert us about a quarter mile out, and then again a few seconds before actually making the course correction. Great system! Reminds me of the system we had on Rover, the Nordhavn we crewed for last March. None of our legs were close to 467 miles long. I think the longest time between waypoint changes was 24 hours (200 miles). This made for the approach of a waypoint the highlight of the day. "Hey look we're going to change course 4 degrees in about two hours! Can't wait!" For an electronics, system integration nut, another interesting feature was the integration the the radar with the navigation. We would put waypoints into the radar. The radar would display this as a lollipop, whenever the destination was within the range. The screen displayed a circle around the destination with a line reaching back to the center of the scope where Rover was. The captain's preference was to program the radar with heading up, meaning the direction of the boat's travel at the moment was towards the top of the screen. This would cause the "lollipop" to waver back and forth a few degrees across the vertical line representing the boat's instantaneous direction of travel. Also all the "bogies" (radar targets, other ships, shoreline reflections) would waver in synch with the lollipop. My preference was to have the course up, meaning the lollipop remained fixed, although slowly shrinking, from the center to the top of the screen. What I liked about it was the bogies remained fixed. The shoreline remained stationary on the screen and easily comparable to the presentation on the chartplotter. One other preference I had was to offcenter the radar presentation. Instead of having the center of the concentric circles at the center of the screen, for a view of 6 units forward and 6 units backwards, I would lower the center a quarter of the way so that I could see 9 units forward and only 3 units backwards. I was more interested in what was coming at us, than what was chasing us. This would let me decrease the range (zoom in) one notch for better detail and still gave me almost the same advance warning of approaching bogies. -- Jim ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ JimAgue For images of Acapulco to Golfito Passage made in March 1999, refer to: http://members.iex.net/~ague/images/NordhavnCruise ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~