Firefly, 9 December 2001
18° 17 N 51° 24 W
Distance to St Lucia 605nm

The little Garmin 12XL hand-held GPS which has guided us thus far with great patience is now showing touching faith in our mere mortal abilities to guide Firefly through rain and squall to St Lucia. It is giving us an ETA. OK, so it varies between 65 and 100 hours as the speed changes but it actually thinks it will arrive!

So why are we navigating with hand held (actually one of three GPS on board) when we have an all-singing, all-dancing, top of the range Raytheon differential set (not that that makes any difference out here)? One that reads out to the Navtex, radar, chart plotter, VHF and, if I wanted, to this computer?

For the latest ARC report from Firefly, click on the links on the ybw and Yachting World homepages.