RayD wrote:
(or; So much time, so little to do)



Only 10 more weeks until sailing season will be in high gear on the
Chesapeake. In the meanwhile, I've been planning a cruise to Bar Harbor. I
found that Google Earth is a medium for selling and recruiting potential
crew. I wrote some computer stuff to translate exports from my Nobeltec nav
software into kml files that GE understands. Although I was happy with the
way the routes were displayed, it still didn't look very nautical. I needed
aids to navigation. I wrote more computer **** to build a database from the
USCG Light Lists. Now I'm getting somewhere.

The Zip file http://www.gis.net/~rayd/demo.zip contains 2 files,
ptown2castine.kml is the route and p2catn.kml contains the ATN's that I may
or may not see along the way. Clicking the link above and selecting "open"
should open the zip file. If you have GE installed, you should only have to
click on the file names and something googlish should occur. I have several
thousand ATNs from Bermuda to Midway, 99% of what's out there. They are
only as accurate as what is published in the USCP Light List volumes. I'm
finding more errors everyday. Let me know what you think.



Ray

S/V Trinity, Annapolis




Ray,

Along these lines I would like to be able to use GE off line as a
navigation aid. Some of the areas I cruise in have fairly gross
differences between charted lat/long and GPS lat/long. It seems the
difficulty is getting past the GE cache limit, 2GB if I am correct.

So, what I would like to do is download a fairly large area and then
track my progress via GPS. Doing this in combination with my chart
plotter, radar, etc.

If you can solve THAT issue then I think you have something unique.
Maybe also illegal.

Or, if there is a already a way to do that, I would appreciate hearing
about it.

Many thanks,

Howard