Just ordered this the other day. . . waiting anxiously for it to come in the mail!

I see references to hexless play.  I read through the demo and must admit the hex-system has an elegant simplicity to it.

However. . . the die hard naval wargamers I will be introducing this too will undoubtedly prefer it as a hexless system.

Is hexless play dealt with in the book, or is that an alternate set of rules posted somewhere?

I picked this up originally because Victory at Sea is quite a ways out from publishing their Age of Dreadnoughts edition and I didn't want to wait.  But the more I think about it, the more I think it might be nice to have two completely different systems.  VaS for WWII and Grand Fleets for WWI.  Hopefully this game will play IRL as cool as it seems on the page.

Any comments from people who have played this game?  Anything you particularly like or dislike about it?  Common house rules you've implemented?  etc?