When you drive a car somewhere, hoping that you will get their close to the agreed upon time, you will inevitably be lucky if you arrive there within 15 minutes of the planned time. This is greatly aggravated if you are driving cross country for 500 to 1000 miles. Yet, you get on a cruise ship and the ship will leave port within 10 minutes of its scheduled departure time, and will arrive at the destination almost to the minute. How in the heck is this possible. Well, one reason is the use of GPS systems and computers. With computers able to link into a GPS satellite to locate itself on the face of the earth, and then have a computer that can quickly calculate the amount of speed, directional control, and outside forces like wind, it makes it so the computer can drive the ship much better than the old seaman used to, or us car drivers can do now. It is amazing to have the Captain tell you we will be docking at 7am in the morning, and then actually do what they tell you the ship will do.