  The Garvey-Kelson relations are used in an iterative process to predict
nuclear masses in the neighborhood of nuclei with measured masses. Average
errors in the predicted masses for the first three iteration shells are smaller
than those obtained with the best nuclear mass models. Their quality is
comparable with the Audi-Wapstra extrapolations, offering a simple and
reproducible procedure for short range mass predictions. A systematic study of
the way the error grows as a function of the iteration and the distance to the
known masses region, shows that a correlation exists between the error and the
residual neutron-proton interaction, produced mainly by the implicit assumption
that $V_{np}$ varies smoothly along the nuclear landscape.
