It sounds like AIS is right for you. It's not useful for me because we have very little
large ship traffic in Monterey.


"Pascal" wrote in message ups.com...
Hi Chuck,

Thanks for your reply. I am a sailor and think that AIS is a fantastic
thing to use in a small boat at sea. I do not have radar in my boat,
and I had a stress situation one time about almost 10 years ago when
aproaching my home port from a 2 days trip in very bad weather at
nigth, and we have seen the ligths of a very very big tanker in a
crossing course with us, caming from the sea as us, and minutes later
we could see nothing farther than a few meters from the bow. I takes
nervous calls in the chanel 16 VHF talking with the ship's pilot giving
our gps position course and speed, so that he could plot us in his
chart, since the ship's radar was inoperative due the heavy rain.
Minutes later, another big tanker was claiming in radio that it was in
a oposite course, with his radar inoperative too, giving his position,
speed and course.

After I discover AIS last year I am geting fanatic about this thing. I
convinced two friends sailors with a litle more money than I was
disposed to spent, to buy a Nasa AIS receiver, we have made several
tests using it and the Sea Clear software on a laptop. It is fantastic
to see all the ships in the chart, all that information available with
a click of the mouse..

My friend instaled a VHF antena in the roof of this very high building,
and he could get many hours of ship ploting. He sent to me several text
files containing AIVDM NMEA messages of some very interesting
situations in the trafic, many near colisions betwen ships of all
types. I could plot this events on my PC at home, using Sea Clear and
replay maay times, it is very fun and educative.

Last year, I was making a delivery for a friend, I was with my wife
only as a crew, and late when I was below, my wife called me, saying
there was a big ship in the bow, I wake very slowly, thinking that she
was exagerating the situation, than I turned on the radar, waited to
it start to turning the antenna and after several minutes it showed the
ship very very close over my bow; I urried in the cockpit and turned to
autopilot 30 degress to starboard an than, looked to the bow: the ship
was not there, it is on my port side, very very close, and it has
turned many degrees to his starboard and almost stoped. I do not liked
this thing called radar, as in the other trip I had made one month
before in this same boat, delivering it to a race, the Marpa alarmed
many times due the clouds.

So, I confess I am looking for a inexpensive AIS wich I will use in my
boat, in another's boats and at home and in the car, to see the ships
in a sunday afternoon with heavy rain to see the ships entering in and
exiting out of our Bahia de Todos os Santos. I do have a laptop and 3
gps (Garmin Map130, Map76 and Map276C) but I do not want to depend of
the laptop, wich is so much large, and heavy and eat very fast my litle
12V bank, so I want a portable Gps/Ploter like my Map276C to plot the
ships and display the AIS information in the screen.

Best regards

Pascal

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