Barge tugs have to be the most dangerous commercial vessels on the Bay. They are low, dark and hard to see. You typically have to interpret their light stack to know what you are looking at. Up a narrow waterway like a river it has to be worse. Passive measures like a reflector is not enough. Although the tugs remain largely exempt from the AIS requirement, most of them now appear to be installing AIS, so I would recommend AIS if you plan to be out at night. Make it a transceiver so that they also have a chance to see you. In any case, I like to to talk to the bridge pilot of any commercial vessel that I share close quarters with at night. Greatly reduces the drama factor.
AIS can fail you miserably when you need it most.
Tim R. and I were sailing our boat Down East. It was a two day slog of over 100 miles in pea soup. Approaching Pen Bay I noticed a target on the radar, then two more that almost appeared to be echos or a funny radar glitch / echo. The tug had AIS so I hailed him to see if he was towing two barges by chance. He WAS towing two barges 900' apart but AIS did NOT show that....
If we had not had radar, and were blindly using AIS as many do now days, it would have been very, very easy to see the target vessel and kept on trucking, and passing behind him.
We would have easily been dismasted if we only had AIS and blindly trusted it. Far too many boaters rely solely on AIS these days and it is a false sense of security..
Only radar painted the ACCURATE picture of what was really happening...... The only thing AIS gave me, in that instance, was the tugs name which made hailing them slightly easier. Without AIS I would have hailed too.
AIS can also be very, very slow to update. Far to slow in the fog....
Imagine if this was in Pea Soup Fog..... Watch the target update on the screen then watch where the sailboat is as I turn the camera and aim it at them.... In fog? NOT....!
Bottom line is use all the tools you have. AIS is simply not a
substitute for radar it a tool best used in
addition to to radar....