Roger Long wrote:
I just bought a Raymarine ST1000 Plus tiller autopilot for my Endeavour
32. The astute among your will immediately wonder how this will work on
a 13,000 pound 32 foot wheel driven boat. The unit will just drive the
vane servo shaft on the Cape Horn steering gear now on order. We could
have bought even a smaller tiller pilot if one was available.

Since I was trying to buy the smallest and cheapest unit I could get, I
was surprised to find out how sophisticated it is. Given the right NMEA
input, it evidently will follow a track to a waypoint instead of just
blindly maintaining a given course. It will even rollover to a new
waypoint and run another leg.

The Raymarine manual describes the inputs needed to follow a track but
in plain English. The Garmin manual for the GPSmap 76Cx I will be using
says:

The following are the sentences for NMEA 0183, Version 3.01 output:

Approved sentences-

GPGCA

GPGLL

GPGSA

GPGSV

GPRMB

GPRMC

GPRTE

GPVTG

GPWPL

GPBOD

GPAPB

If anyone could annotate a quoted copy of this list I would appreciate
it. I've tried to find a listing via Google but the only one I can turn
up is quickly replaced by another page before I can read it. Presumably,
the Capt'n wants you to buy the information.

A link to a similar but readable listing would also help.

Any tips or experience interfacing and using one of these autopilots
with a GPS also appreciated.

Roger,
A good place for NMEA and GPS info is http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter/
krj