On Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:50:58 -0500, Geoff Schultz
wrote:

Have you ever entered a busy harbor at night and tried to sort out all of
the navigation lights from the shore lights and vessels operating? That
can be very hard, let alone keeping track of the N orientation.


RADAR of course is almost always oriented "heading up". I find it
much easier to match up chart features if it is oriented the same way.
Our RADAR/Chart Plotter has an option to overlay RADAR and chart data
which is extremely useful for sorting out a strange harbor in poor
visibility, and differentiating between navaids and boat traffic.

I'm not arguing with you. I just don't think that way, or at least I find
that it takes a lot more concentration to rotate the chart to match what
I'm seeing. When you have other people on board and they're at the helm,
do they find the display confusing?

I've found a few people who are so hide bound that they will only
consider "north up" chart orientation. I view that as their problem
and go with what works for me. I do find that "north up" is more
intuitive for laying out routes and doing slow speed maneuvers such as
pulling the anchor, but immediately switch to course up when underway.