Funny thing was I usually plant the tripod on the premarked dots on the pavers. Since I was changing positions, I did a polar align using the CGEM polar alignment feature. The first couple of hours I spent on Eta Carina - and it was terrible. Lots of trails for the 5 mins images. I then switched to 5128 - which was beaut. Then I switched to M16 and M8 and had trails and trouble again. Finally, I did 6 x 5 mins on M27 as an experiment... and the stars were perfectly round with 5 min images. Wierd night!
