AIS and Colregs Another Example

[carstenb]

Sailing up the English Channel last week, I took this picture of the radar screen. First my apologies for the quality - it was in a force 9, gusting 10 gale so I was a little busy with other matters- This is on the dog watch.

Count 'em - 18 ships going i almost every direction. Here AIS is invaluable. There is no way I could have crossed this stretch of the canal using only my eyes and a handheld compass

This was pretty normal for the Channel.

Re Colregs - no way to do this unless you have a thorough understanding. Here, you simply cannot "just stay out of their way"

[El Pinguino]

Back when Noah was still a deck boy I was told the best way to go up the Channel was with no radar and three mile vis..... you only saw what was important.....a large percentage of those ships would not have bothered you and life would have been simpler if you had not been aware of their existance...

edited to add... I can count at least 11 or maybe 12 of no interest whatsoever and the Mk 1 eyeball could have done the same...

[rabbi]

what about this one from Gibraltar: hundrets of AIS targets but none realy of interest

But I agree it's really nice to have AIS when you need it to find a hole in that endless chain of ships to sneak through.

But it sometimes also has a drawback. In my last boat I could see bigger ships get out of my way at night. They saw my nav lights in the midle of nowhere and altered course significantly.

Now that I have an AIS transponder they can see me on their screens and some pass in much shorter distances because they know it fits.