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Originally Posted by yachtvalhalla
OK .. apology accepted. So I did a few calculations for the tentative route. The great circle distance from Boston to Falmouth via the intermediate points is 2,976.9 nm. The rhumb line distance is a whopping 20.9 nm more at 2997.8 nm, or 0.07% greater.
Terry
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Yes, but the "intermediate points" lie on the great circle route so, in order to find them you need to start with the great circle route. If your navigation softare does not support great circle routes, these "intermediate points" must come from external calculations. In the last analysis, the difference between GC and Rhumb us probably less than a day so it's not that big a deal. It's my racing background... I always like to start with the shortest distance...
Back to the main point... the differnce between the various software packages... I spoke ith the Rep for Nobeltec VNS today and he confirms that VNS does do weather, AIS, and great circle plotting. It also sounds as though it's a lot more user friendly, dragging courses, etc. So I'm going to arrange a hands-on demo and I may me upgrading from Fugawi.