YOTREPS

I have joined Yotreps to track my positions on a Google-style map. Each position will contain a comment from me of up to 80 characters.

The Yotreps home page is at http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/index.php

I have made my first position entry. To find my track, at the Yotreps home page select the "Reporting Boat List" button on the left. The list is sorted by the "Yotreps ID" column on the left. Scroll way down the list to Pachuca's call sign VNW5980, then click on the "track" hot link at the far right of Pachuca's entry. There you will see Pachuca's position in a Google-style map. At the top left corner are the control buttons which allow you to zoom (+ and -) and pan up or across (the arrows). If you zoom in on Pachuca you will see that she appears to be at anchor. I attribute this to the fact that the position reports are to the nearest nautical mile, which is adequate for a boat on the high seas. Pachuca is acually in the Ala Wai boat Harbor, a bit north and west of the depicted position.

Note also that just below Pachuca's entry is Bjorn and Christina's "Mischief", whose last postion report was from the Red Sea.

You should be able to go directly to Pachuca's position report by clicking http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=VNW5980

Finally, some technical information. Sailmail's "Airmail" software provides a "Position Peport" module. The module provides for input of Lat, Long, and GMT directly from a GPS receiver. I connected the little "button" GPS receiver that I use for Cmap to my laptop's USB port, identified the port as COM6:, and set up the Position Report module to expect GPS data from COM6:. Now whenever I open up the Position Report module the current Lat, Long, and GMT are already in the report. All I have to do is insert a comment (80 chars max) if I want to, then I post it for mailing. The next time I connect to a Sailmail short station the position report will go out. I can have these reports sent automatically every X hours or every day at a specified time.