racing software

I would like to bolster data acquisition capabilities for long distance racing. My daughter went off to university in September so the boat inherited her old laptop. I don't care to spend thousands of dollars on software on yacht racing software and electronic charts (Expedition seems to be the clear favorite for distance racers, btw but kinda pricey) so am researching several freeware programs.

Basically just looking to connect laptop up to NMEA out from Raymarine Seatalk network to track position, wind velocity, direction, assist with laylines, hopefully a better VMG calculation, create/update polars & strip charts and otherwise log all of this data for post-race analysis. I don't really need chart plotting capabilities (I have a small Garmin plotter, backup handheld GPS and paper charts). An addition of AIS receiver might be in the cards for this season so those feature are also appealing.

Here are some open source products under consideration.

OpenCPN is a free software project to create a concise chart plotter and navigation software for use as an underway or planning tool
Capcode is a more regatta-focussed navigation program which takes NMEA inputs from wind/depth/gps/ais inputs, functions as a wind/gps/speed/depth repeater on your PC and computes polar diagrammes, VMG, etc. It's programmed in Java.
SeaClear is a PC based chart plotter for Windows 2000/XP/NT/95/98/ME. With a GPS connected it displays the current position, speed, heading and other data on the screen.
NavMonPc is a Windows program for the capture, display, and playback of NMEA-0183 data.

Of course I like certain features of each product but at at this point I believe Capcode will be the program that best suits my needs. Check back later this year for an update...