"Paul" wrote in
:

On VALIS, I'm the captain, electronics tech, and owner. I struggle to
keep the captain's love of gadgets from giving the tech way too much
to do, and making the owner upset with the unnecessary expense. It
can be a challenge! It's a good thing they are all such nice guys.
Brave and handsome, too! And no, we're not schizophrenic.



My captain knows it only takes a pint or two of his fine English ale and
his electronic technician follows along well. He has money, I don't
much, but I refuse his offers. "Simply take me sailing with you." is my
reward. I'm always welcome. I've spent months aboard in other ports
fixing things that got broken, like our Perkins that got waterlogged
offshore of Florida. I spent a month in Daytona Beach aboard her while
Cutter Doc, the great local diesel mechanic, straightened her out. Cap'n
went back to Atlanta, leaving it in my hands. I can put work on hold in
my business, during some slow months. When he and the Gulfstreamer race
team showed up, she was ready to cast off as soon as the gourmet cooks
moved the local Publix supermarket to Lionheart's larder. In the galley,
they cook...I wash dishes and clean house. That works great. You don't
want to eat MY cooking...(c;

There's a misconception about autopilots I see on your response.
Autopilots don't go to waypoints. They do as they are told, turning this
way and that, when told to by the nav softwares. I'm quite surprised you
have so much trouble making Raymarines own nav software waypoint their
own equipment. Something must not be setup right.

As to the up-to-dateness of the electronic charts, there's a reason we
use The Cap'n. My captain's billionaire boss has a huge motoryacht,
160' I think it is. They use The Cap'n and have a full subscription to
all the charts on the planet, updated ASAP on CDROMs. Guess who gets
last month's pack of old CDROMs....(c; Electronic charts on the laptop,
here, are only a month old....close enough. Last year, my captain rode
the big yacht to the Monaco Boat Show, where this megayacht was on
display to potential buyers. He saw a big difference between it and
Lionheart. They took on 6500 gallons of diesel in Bermuda, having come
around from Ft Lauderdale. There were some storms between Bermuda and
the Azores. The boat stores 10,000 gallons of diesel in its tanks. THEY
HAD TO SLOW DOWN BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH FUEL TO MAKE AZORES
about half way there....(c; Geoffrey said he loves sailboats much
better, now. "Fill 'er, up? Will that be Mastercard, VISA, AMEX, Carte
Blanche or Swiss bank transfer, sir?"....hee hee. 10,000 gallons at
$5.20/gallon would put me to ROWING! Their dingy has twin 250 outboards
on a center console fishing boat.

Larry