Scanning the Globe

After a nice week of crystal clear skies, yet cold, a time when one could look from the Kingston-Edmonds ferry at sails tacking across this southern end of the Salish Sea (aka Puget Sound), enjoying great frost-bite sailing. But now the weather has moved in with grey skies, and rain. Though a bit warmer, snow is forecast mid-week. Time to hunker down with a warm stove and get comfy writing those Christmas thank-you notes and finishing up those cartons of eggnog.


A few posts ago, December 5th, 2008, to be exact, I wrote about the Automatic Identification System, or AIS as it is more commonly called. In a nutshell, it's a radio system, and being a radio system it can see "vessels" when you or your radar cannot. Overlaid on your plotter, it shows vessels that "are just around the corner", thus giving you time to make course corrections. You can read more on this by going to the archives to the left and clicking on 2008, December, 5th. A great safety device, as well as a fun one to monitor when at anchor. You get all sorts of information about the vessels you "see" - - 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. I did notice that military vessels don't say much of anything on their icon, something akin to sailors and soldiers wearing camouflage uniforms in Starbucks (Hey, I can see you!).


AIS is becoming more popular, with some larger recreational vessels now transmitting their information while the rest of us just "read" what they're saying.


And when at evening anchor, 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, just another form of mariner relaxation.


But now you can go even global, thanks to the creative work of the University of the Aegean in Mytilene, Greece.  Those lads and gals of the Department of Product and System Design Engineering have wonderfully created and host a world-wide AIS, Marine Traffic.com from which you can track vessels all over the globe. Right now, as I write this post, their page shows 20,461 vessels being tracked.


A great way to pass the time, a sort of nautical "Where's Elmo?", as you're  hunkered down and waiting for clearer skies and calmer seas.


And if you haven't yet done so, check out AIS for your own vessel. I got mine through Milltech Marine, a local Northwest company with great service and support.


Thanks to Mike Harlick and Rod Scher (author, The Annotated Sailing Around the World) who separately introduced me to the University of the Aegean site (which is also a hint asking you for your ideas for this blog . . .).