Latitude & Longitude Format

SailBlogs expects all postions to be entered in the form of degrees with decimal minutes or decimal degrees. This is typical of the way most GPS devices display the location.

EXAMPLE (Key West, FL):

24 36.0'N
81 36.0'W

In this example:

• The latitude degrees are 24, and the minutes are 36.0.
• The are no seconds.
• The ' mark for minutes is optional, but a "curved quote" or "smart quote" could result in the direction letter being ignored and thus display an incorrect position. See Turning off smart quotes in Word for more information.
• A direction indicator (N, S, E, W) is required.
• Minutes can have up to 4 decimal places.
• If using a direction, negatives will be ignored, i.e. -81 36.0'W will NOT be plotted as 81 36.0'E, the sign is dropped and this will be added as WEST.
• The degree symbol is not a standard character and different systems will send different codes for this character. For simplicity, it is best to just leave out the degree symbol as it is not necessary to the mapping system.

For decimal degrees:

24.6
-81.6

In this example:

• The are no minutes or seconds.
• South and West values are negative
• A direction indicator not used and will be ignored