[heartc]

Oh, btw for the above approach better refrain from using that chronometer thingy people were whining for. It takes too long to come up with a decent speed, especially when AOB is anything other than 90°, and range needs to be spot on or the speed will be bollocks. Take range, enter AOB from what you see, and - for merchants - start of with a target speed of about 7 knots (enter that manually). Get the Position Keeper going. Then work from there (adjust speed if neccessary as per the method described above). When the computed target bearing and sighted bearings stay the same, you will hit (computed target bearing you see on the inner ring's 12oc position of the lower left hand dial - hint: when you move the mouse cursor over it, you'll get a digital readout). Really easy. Hint: Seek a spot on the ship to compare them, like a mast or smokestack - not the whole ship, which would be too inaccurate. BTW, with this method range will be almost irrelevant so you can stop using the ship recognition manual, which is a waste of time (except when you go for below keel shots).

Also this is how it was done iRL. While iRL they indeed plotted the solution from way out, especially once radar was available, they also checked if the "bearings match" all the time once visual contact was made, which means doing exactly what I described above.