Nice write up Alex, sounds like you had a great night of observing. I honestly don't know where I would be without GOTOs. It really makes this finding objects that much easier.
My EQ6's GOTO's a very accurate when I carefully centre the alignment stars. It always puts the object in the FOV and it once even put Jupiter on my DMK's CDD chip.
I always polar align before doing a star alignment but I guess "if it aint broke don't fix it" in your situation.
