Technology Rocks!
That AIS is WAY COOL! Identifies contacts, lays down tracks and calculates collision probabilities! I wonder if it comes with an option for calling in air support? Gotta figure out how to get me one. Here in San Francisco Bay, we expect at least one ship crossing per day so we may be a little blasé when it comes to encountering big ships. amusing thread might be “how close have you ever come to a moving ship? (1,000 tons or greater). I can’t help thinking how different the outcome would have been if the skipper only knew how to correctly measure his jib. No confusion about what size, and he would have had enough power to avoid the situation in the first place. IMHO, the sailboat skipper (and many of the responders to this thread) has a very ego centric view of the world. “The tanker should have yielded to a small sailboat, the tanker skipper is either drunk or an idiot, or why didn’t they call me back on the VHF.” The world really doesn’t revolve around us yachtsmen. Nobody is going to spend a grand in fuel oil to “dodge” an obstinate yachtie. Not like those behemoths can turn on a dime either. Common sense would dictate that the sailboat ought not to place himself in the situation in the first place. I doubt that a Maylay tanker crew could even hear our little Freon horns from their bridge. My old boat had a load hailer speaker mounted at the spreaders and even a full volume it wouldn’t have enough output to reach up into a pilot house. In regards to the radio, what do think are the chances that a Maylay tanker plying Asian waters has anybody in the pilothouse proficient enough in English to understand that radio transmission? One thing that I’m not clear on is the ETA for the tanker was a couple of days away from Port Dickson. Am I understanding this correctly that the s/v Valhalla was pretty far in to the Malacca Straits? Not much in the way of Nav Aides out there but it is also curious that M/T Ocean Courage (SP), M/T Lady Fatime and an Unkwn contact were all moving into this particular piece of water. Perhaps there’s a buoy that is not marked on the e-chart. I believe that I read somewhere that these straits are the most heavily traveled in the world. Must be boat soup. I’m not defending this guy but, if you have a chance, click over to his website. It’s pretty interesting. He has been cruising the SW Pacific since 1988 and has been hanging out in Malaysia for a couple of years.
That AIS is WAY COOL! Identifies contacts, lays down tracks and calculates collision probabilities! I wonder if it comes with an option for calling in air support? Gotta figure out how to get me one. Here in San Francisco Bay, we expect at least one ship crossing per day so we may be a little blasé when it comes to encountering big ships. amusing thread might be “how close have you ever come to a moving ship? (1,000 tons or greater). I can’t help thinking how different the outcome would have been if the skipper only knew how to correctly measure his jib. No confusion about what size, and he would have had enough power to avoid the situation in the first place. IMHO, the sailboat skipper (and many of the responders to this thread) has a very ego centric view of the world. “The tanker should have yielded to a small sailboat, the tanker skipper is either drunk or an idiot, or why didn’t they call me back on the VHF.” The world really doesn’t revolve around us yachtsmen. Nobody is going to spend a grand in fuel oil to “dodge” an obstinate yachtie. Not like those behemoths can turn on a dime either. Common sense would dictate that the sailboat ought not to place himself in the situation in the first place. I doubt that a Maylay tanker crew could even hear our little Freon horns from their bridge. My old boat had a load hailer speaker mounted at the spreaders and even a full volume it wouldn’t have enough output to reach up into a pilot house. In regards to the radio, what do think are the chances that a Maylay tanker plying Asian waters has anybody in the pilothouse proficient enough in English to understand that radio transmission? One thing that I’m not clear on is the ETA for the tanker was a couple of days away from Port Dickson. Am I understanding this correctly that the s/v Valhalla was pretty far in to the Malacca Straits? Not much in the way of Nav Aides out there but it is also curious that M/T Ocean Courage (SP), M/T Lady Fatime and an Unkwn contact were all moving into this particular piece of water. Perhaps there’s a buoy that is not marked on the e-chart. I believe that I read somewhere that these straits are the most heavily traveled in the world. Must be boat soup. I’m not defending this guy but, if you have a chance, click over to his website. It’s pretty interesting. He has been cruising the SW Pacific since 1988 and has been hanging out in Malaysia for a couple of years.
I think it's 3 vertical white lights at night and a vertical white cylinder in daylight, but I'm not sure.
