Marine Traffic AIS-SAT - 1 ship location test

[sinbad8]

We´ve had an excellent opportunity to test the 1 ship AIS-SAT locator offered by Marine Traffic at only US$ 16.- per month for unlimited tracking by Satellite.

It was a long voyage from far North in Norway to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands,via the Panama Canal,just completed yesterday 12 Nov.

We posted AIS-SAT locations to Facebook on average 3 times per day,and it did not fail even ONE day. Excellent service combined with OpenCPN I can thoroughly recommend for long voyages.

See attachments,including the total track as a .gpx file.

Tore

[AedanC]

What type of equipment was on board? Class A?

[sinbad8]

Commercial ships normally carry Class ´A´ equipment.

At the first opportunity I will also attempt to track a round-the-world sailor equipped with Class ´B´ equipment and report here.


Tore

[AedanC]

The guys sailing in the Vendee Globe at the moment are carrying Class B and will cover a significant part of the globe in the next few months. One of them might make an interesting test case.

[sinbad8]

The leaders are passing Dakar now and none of the boats can be found by AIS from Marine Traffic. This is a COMMERCIAL race where the boats do not have much history. Chances are they all have Class ´A´ transponders or satellite AIS receivers. Where money is no object....

ONLY one American participant,most of the others are French.

If anybody knows of other round the world sailors en-route,please let me know.

Tore

[CarstenWL]

... most of them have Class B transponder:

Maître CoQ 228351700
Hugo Boss 235112112
Edmond de Rothschild 227396550
Le Souffle du Nord pour le Projet Imagine 228279600
Finistère Mer Vent 228269600
StMichel - Virbac 228070900
La Mie Câline 228264900
Foresight Natural Energy 227417050
Bureau Vallée 228016900
Newrest - Matmut 228275600
Kilcullen Voyager - Team Ireland 235058709
No Way Back 244870334
COMMEUNSEULHOMME 228295700
Spirit of Hungary 243042525

Not yet found:
TechnoFirst – faceOcean
La Fabrique
Spirit of Yukoh
Famille Mary - Étamine du Lys
Compagnie du Lit - Boulogne Billancourt

(MMSIs identified and posted by user "zoerbnet" in a German Sailing Forum)

Regards,

Carsten

[sinbad8]

Thanks Carsten...

I DID find GREAT AMERICAN IV - MMSI: 518100250 and I am making inquiries
with Marine Traffic presently.

I HAVE registered the boat in my AIS-SAT account,but for some reason it will not display the data although it IS received.

See attached...

Regds

Tore

[CarstenWL]

... what kind of AIS-SAT subscription do you have? The simple plan on Marinetraffic only allows one AIS-SAT target.

Carsten

[CarstenWL]

... some more posted by user "zoerbnet" in a German Sailing Forum...

One Planet One Ocean: 224097940
SMA: 228014600
Queguiner: 228278600
Bastide Otio: 227072550
MACSF: 228277800
Great American IV: 367574790 (also thanks Tore)

Carsten

[sinbad8]

Carsten..

My plan is 1 ship AIS-SAT $16.- per month..

The SAT position received for Great American IV is over a day old.

Sailing vessels, especially racing ones are mostly keeled over and should have a special antenna for max vertical signal transmission. Is that correct?

Many of the vessels in the race are not recognized by Marine Traffic??


Tore

[Paul Elliott]

I was tracking Jeanne Socrates / "Nereida" during her recent circumnavigation attempt (she retreated due to bad conditions, and is re-starting today). Once she left ground-based AIS coverage I started tracking her via satellite AIS, using the $16 marinetraffic.com service.

With her Class-B transponder I got reports roughly once a day. Sometimes the reports were only a few hours apart, but there were also gaps greater than one day. Fortunately, she also has an Iridium-based tracker, but since I am very curious about the statistics of satellite-AIS reception I will resume my sat-AIS tracking when she re-starts.

[sinbad8]

GOT´YA !! sy RUA HATU SOLO SAILOR. Part of the Vendee Globe round the world regatta with a Class ´B´transponder.

Will post her position on Facebook every day if possible.

Se the last position tracked tonight on the attached OpenCPN screendump.

Regds

Tore

[sinbad8]

On our way with the Vendee Global Regatta on it´s 7th day, following sy Rua Hatu Solo Sailor.

She has a Class ´B´transponder so position reports will be once or twice per day.

Here is the FIRST report using OpenCPN....

Tore

[sinbad8]

VENDÉE GLOBAL REGATTA.

I have set up a Group page in Facebook where I shall endeavor to post daily AIS-SAT track positions of one of the participants in the regatta, sy Rua Hatu Solo Sailor which is equipped with a Class ´B´ AIS transponder.

The regatta is presently outside Dakar,West Africa, on their way South.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1699244093737246/


Tore

[roland stockham]

I can maybe understand how this system works, I can't for the life of me see why anyone would pay $16 per month to track somebody else's boat via AIS. This can already be done for half that price via satellite trackers which send the info to everyone on the mailing list.