On my last trip to the states I brought back a new VHF radio with an AIS receiver. We didn’t buy an AIS receiver because we thought we needed one. The decision path was much more indirect. We decided that we wanted an VHF remote microphone at the helm for easy communications when we are underway. The main unit is inside at the nav station, so when we were underway we would take a handheld out to the helm and leave it there to use. However, the range on the handheld is not nearly as far as the main radio, so that would put us at a disadvantage if we ever needed to make an important call from the helm. Of course, there was no optional remote microphone for our VHF radio model, so in order to make this happen, we needed to buy a whole new radio. In doing the research, Tim discovered that it wasn’t any more expensive to buy a radio with built in AIS reception than without, so why not get the one with AIS.
For those that don’t know, AIS is an automated location indicator. All of the large ships are required to trasmit AIS, and many pleaser yachts are doing it now as well. So, instead of relying solely on visual sightings during the day and radar at night when looking for other vessels, the AIS transmission will tell you the location, course, speed, closest point of approach, time to closest point of approach, and lots of other vessel information as well. So, it’s a handy thing to have to avoid getting run down by a freighter in the middle of the night.
We only have the AIS receiver, not a transmitter, so other boats can’t see us. But at least we can see them. It was fun to have this when we were buddy boating across the sea, because the other boats were were with were transmitting AIS. I’m sure they didn’t appreciate that we were in stealth mode, and they couldn’t see us.
Gresham Family Exodus 