Automatic Identification System

You're cruising blissfully on a beautiful, calm morning. Just a wisp of cloud; a mill-pond sea. Radar and VHF radio on - - nothing on the scope, no chatter on Channel 16. Your morning coffee is strong and smells, oh, so good. Life is simply - - grand.

You approach Turn Point on the western edge of Stuart Island, running southwest down Boundary Pass , wondering if you'll luck out this time and see some Orcas. Not a single blip on the radar. Just to be safe you switch to the Canadian Vessel Traffic Services' Channel 11 to monitor any commercial shipping in the area. Nothing heard. Nada.

Just as you get really close to the Point, all of a sudden appears a ship, seeming larger than life, running at about 20 knots, and heading straight for you! His ear-splitting five short whistle blasts propel your quick turn to port as he clears you. Then comes his wake. . . . .

A couple of years ago we discovered a great gadget that helps see these situations coming: an Automatic Identification System, or ASI, which is really simplicity itself.

What the AIS is is a radio system, and being a radio system is it can "see" vessels without you (or your radar) being able to physically see them, behind hills, around bends such as Turn Point, in the same way that you can "hear" radio conversations from out-of-sight boats or stations. We have our AIS connected to our navigation system, which happens to be Rose Point's "Coastal Explorer".

Overlaid on our electronic chart are symbols (they look like a child's wooden boat) showing all the vessels within radio range. Then clicking on the symbol, or mark, you see the vessel's name; if it is "at anchor", "underway using engine", or "not under command"; type of ship and cargo; tonnage; dimensions; speed and course over ground; call-sign; MMSI; and destination, and when it will get there. For anything else you'd have to go to My Space.

It also gives you some navigational information, such as the vessels lat/long position, the closest point it will come near you and the time when this will happen. All this gets updated on you electronic chart every six minutes.

Although I haven't had occasion to, with all this you could even call the vessel by name and call-sign on your VHF radio, rather than that impersonal "ship off my port bow".

The hardware is simple. A regular VHF antenna to a small 4.5" x 3" x 1" unit which you can mount on an overhead, and a connector to your laptop or navigation plotter. My unit came from Milltech Marine in Seattle. There are others. The folk there are good and helped me get exactly what I needed. Cost was under $200.

All commercial vessels are required to have AIS that broadcasts all this information. The AIS I have only receives. Someday I may get one that also transmits, so that other vessels can "see" me and know all sorts of things about me.

But for now, I'm happy to be able to see around Turn Point even before I'm there and to know that the "Pacific Express", heading for Vancouver BC, is coming 'round the bend!

And when at evening anchor in Sucia Island's Shallow Bay, calmly nursing a cool glass of wine, it doesn't bother me one bit when my wife and traveling companions kid me as I sit tracking vessels on my plotter.

"Look, there goes the B.C. Ferry "Spirit of Vancouver Island" leaving Tsawwassen. And there's the tug "Intrepid III" with a tow, just rounding Moresby Island. Wow!"

Nope. It's just another form of mariner relaxation.