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Living in Seattle offers a unique view of technology. Visit any trendy neighborhood (or marina) and you’re likely to see casually dressed urban professionals tapping Apple devices. Drive east across Lake Washington, however, and the road leads to Bellevue, Washington — Microsoft’s hometown.

Just to the northeast of this PC boomtown is Redmond, a bedroom community for Microsoft employees and the home of Rose Point Navigation Systems, a company that specializes in PC-based navigation software. Brad Christian, Rose Point’s founder, was an early Microsoft employee who left for a cruising lifestyle aboard his 57-foot Bayliner in 2001. Frustration arrived, however, when Christian tried using the available PC-based navigation systems, which he described as “clunky and nonintuitive.” Also, these programs had a reputation for crashing, and for a less-than-ideal user interface — descriptors that the Apple-hugging crowd often tosses at “Microsofties.”

The problem, Christian said, was that existing PC-based navigation software suffered from its own evolution, which added layers of software that gunked up the architecture and reduced user “discoverability” and reliability. Given his background as a key project manager of Microsoft’s C++ (versions 5 and 6), Christian understood that the only way to get the software that he personally wanted was to build a new system from the ground up.

He started by creating a matrix of every conceivable feature that serious cruisers would want. He then began writing the software that could support these needs, even if they weren’t initially bundled with the program (e.g., weather information), while placing a high value on simplicity and usability. “Things should just work,” Christian said of his software — decidedly Jobsian speak for a man with a Gatesian background.

When Christian wrote his Beta version, he had little intention of getting back into the software business, but when his friends remarked on how stable, intuitive and easy the program was, he realized that he had created a tool that could revolutionize the PC-based navigation market. Christian began working on a consumer version and founded Rose Point Navigation Systems in 2003. Coastal Explorer was unveiled in February 2004 at the Seattle Boat Show, and the business began to grow, leasing offices and making hires.

One fortuitous interview unfurled at the Seattle Yacht Club when Christian was randomly seated with Jeff Hummel, a former Nobeltec (cms.nobeltec
.com) employee who was instrumental in creating the first radar overlay for PC-based navigation software, and for getting vector charts to run properly on the Nobeltec platform. The conversation swung to business, and Hummel started working full-time for Rose Point as director of sales and marketing in December 2004.

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“Being boaters, we know the features that people need — we’re not into frilly bells and whistles,” Hummel explained, citing 3-D charts as an example. They aren’t useful, he said. They look great at a boat show, but you can’t use them for navigation. Instead, Rose Point focuses on essentials, such as routing, cruising-guide information, weather and tide information, and radar and AIS overlays, while maintaining an intuitive user interface.