My sister and her husband have a 115’ boat they keep in a sheltered moorage in Seattle. We visited them on it in the waters around Juneau last year and I was being given the rundown of the Ships controls by the captain.
Basically they could have dialed in the waters in Elliot Bay (Seattle), hit “go”, and everyone could have gotten off the boat in the island waters near Juneau and met it in Seattle.
However, heaven help the boat or log that got in front of it.
Yep. I had a 50’ DeFever trawler with GPS, chart plotter, autopilot, and depth finer, all linked electronically. You can set radar and depth alerts and program the course in and then basically go about your business while the boat does it’s thing. Of course we always had someone on watch but the boat didn’t really care.