I had an idea that it would be cool to be able to
monitor the position of my
boat using
AIS, through
www.marinetraffic.com and the free
Marine Traffic app on my
phone. My
boat sits in Island Harbour,
Anguilla, on a good
mooring and by chance I have an
AIS station for Marinetraffic.com installed at my house, although any station will function for this. If I didn't have that station this would not
work for me as there is no other AIS station within range.
At first I had the boat on
anchor until the
mooring installation was completed. I worried about it, so I would leave the AIS on transmit and that allowed me to check on the boat's position. I suggested to Marinetraffic.com it would be a useful feature for cruisers to be able to define a notification if the boat was to move, and they sent me instructions how to do it, as the feature already exists.
By creating a Custom Area in My Account, you can define a circle around the boat's location. You can then define a notification if it leaves the area. It's easy to edit the location if you are using it to
monitor your
current anchorage.
I think this may be potentially very useful in a number of situations, such as monitoring a boat at
anchor when you leave, or preventing boat theft. I wouldn't advocate it for boats in
marinas, it would create too much
noise for little gain, but for boats at anchor or out on moorings, it would be an easy to set up a monitor using only the
equipment you already have. As long as you have data on your
phone or periodic
WiFi, the marinetraffic.com app will push notifications at you.
I hope this is useful to someone and I'll pass on any comments to marinetraffic.com if anyone has suggestions.