Distance and course to steer along part of a great ellipse can be readily determined with the
use of vector analysis and differential geometry. Although the resulting integral for distance
is not amenable to direct solution, it can nevertheless be handled efficiently and quickly by
available commercial mathematical software. In this paper, a method of computing distance
along with course to steer is presented and is one that has been prepared with the syntax of
a particular commercial mathematics package in mind. This approach was intended to
appeal to the navigator who is interested in the mathematics of navigation, and who
nowadays solves his problems with a portable computer.
