Open sea, what do you use for Navigation?

[adlib2]

Originally Posted by s/v Beth

OK, you have left the coastal waters for a 2000 mile journey. You are out of the shipping lanes. What equipment do you keep on?
VHF? waste of electrons unless you are close enough to talk to someone...
Inquiring minds want to know!

Aircraft can reach you a couple of hundred miles away and have assisted in many rescues at sea.
With ample solar/wind power generation I leave on depth, speed, wind, VHF, HF, CP/AP and radar at night and in squalls, frig/freezer.
Turn off sonar and HP water.

[Muckle Flugga]

Originally Posted by conachair

Where are they? I only have experience of the Atlantic, and can't remember seeing fishing vessel in deep water. Like off the shelf 4k deep water. Sometimes on the edge of the shelf I've seen long liners, with 5 mile lines out. Well offshore my radar has only picked up one vessel way off Senegal not transmitting AIS otherwise in the deep ocean everyone was transmitting.
This is ocean though, not coastal within 50 or 100 miles of land.

Biscay the big trawlers nearly all seem to be transmitting now. Nice

Mostly Asian. Korean and Chinese, and some Latin American, and likely some Spanish. And doubt not. They are out there. Even in the deepest, remotest ocean areas. It is actually fairly common to encounter mother ships with small skiffs in the mid areas between, for example, Galapagos and Marquesas, ounce for ounce the remotest areas from land anywhere. I have a good mate who was stunned when, on that passage for the first time, he suddenly heard the noise of an engine, and turned his head to see two little blokes in an open skiff with outboard engine, 1000 miles WSW of Galapagos… They were waving came alongside, so he tossed them a couple of beers. They were extremely excited and zoomed off over the horizon. A few minutes later a different skiff with three other guys appeared, this time asking for beer. True that.

You will also see them in the central Caribbean sea, and occasionally randomly mid atlantic. Very rare to see AIS. ALmost never.

[Muckle Flugga]

Originally Posted by Bulawayo

Its probably more about what we turn off - very little. The radar is usually off except when there is significant shipping around or the weather is doing its thing and the SSB is normally off as well.
VHF is always on, 24 hours a day, as is the refrigeration.
AIS, depth, log, chart plotter, autopilot, are always on when we are moving as are the nav lights after dark. The music system is used perhaps 25% of the time. Internal lights are rarely on when sailing and we prefer also to switch off the pressure water at sea.

Good practise. Though I prefer to have radar on at all times if power affords. Obviously not possible in all situations.

[Benz]

Originally Posted by conachair

I usually leave gps on so that for each days run you can compare distance through the water against distance over the ground and see what the current is doing. Best ever was 70 free miles a day

This would require that you have a knot-log on all the time as well. Which I don't. But you need not keep the GPS on all the time even for this. Just plot the successive GPS fixes on your chart and figure out the distance run over the ground by measuring between them.

[svmariane]

Originally Posted by s/v Beth

OK, you have left the coastal waters for a 2000 mile journey. You are out of the shipping lanes. What equiptment do you keep on?
Depth finder? Don't need it
Chartplotter? you just going to see how deep the ocean is?
Radar? AIS? Probably at night or when you are napping. Otherwise?
VHF? waste of electrons unless you are close enough to talk to someone...
How about an delorme inreach? At least you would have fixes every few hours...
So what do you leave on?
Autopilot?
Inquiring minds want to know!

VHF, ch 16.
{Somebody out there might need help, and be out visual contact due to local wxr conditions. Also:}

GPS feeding VHF with rcv-only AIS built in.
{For me, it seems sort of a no-brainer to have at least rcv only AIS. Can't hurt, you know?}

That's it.


But the "as needed" stuff:

Nav Lights at night

12 vdc Engel fridge/freezer (intermittent, mostly daytime)

SSB for morning check-in and/or wxr updates

Computer for plotting twice daily. {GPS position hourly log book entry. Paper charts updated when wife takes the watch.}

Battery chargers for AA bats for hand-held GPS & a few torches plus recharge computer.

Radar - Well, that's a judgement call dependent on the situation.

About the depth sounder... My wife now insists that we turn it off when offshore; she got really spooked when that whale came alongside & gave her an eerie eye. Time stood still. T'was wondrous. She loved it.... BUT she blames the depth sounder pinging away for attracting that whale & doesn't want a repeat. Damn whale was bigger/longer than our 48 ft sailboat!

{No kidding. Really. Just ask her sometime. Then we'll have another beer and I'll tell you about this REALLY big mahi-mahi that I fought for hours until this shark came along and snapped it up while this errant seagull attacked my hat while winds where zipping past at storm strength and..... But I love her and I believe her and I'll bust your head if you make fun of her and... hell.... You should have SEEN the look on her face that pre-dawn 'morn!}

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Muckle Flugga

.............. , and occasionally randomly mid atlantic. Very rare to see AIS. ALmost never.

Ok, though I've yet to see one well offshore in the North or South Atlantic.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by s/v Beth

This is what I suspected. I am amazed that most of you keep your GPS up all the time. Afraid of a wormhole? It's not like you are moving someplace really quickly. Vhf and AIS I can see. How about a fix once or twice a day, cause you don't do DR...

GPS is great for sog & cog rather than position, in the vague hope that you might keep that handy helping current you've just found..

[belle-isle]

VHF channel 16 on 24/7 is evident for us for reasons already explained by others.

AIS receiver is always on as well, as well as our radar detector which we turn on offshore (inshore we mostly keep it off, too much traffic and beeping all the time). Radar itself is off most of the time except in fog, to check on squalls or a specific target at night.

Most other electronics stay on (including our electronic barometer which saved our a... more than once when its alarm goes off due to a strong drop). I'd like to turn the sounder off but it works with the speedometer so I keep that on as well. Anyways, we don't have a large amount of solar panels but we've never been short on power due to these electronic navaids.

The laptop with OpenCPN and which is our sole chartplotter is the largest consumer (along with the fridge) and we use it less when less power is available and more when we have more.


Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[kelbylinn]

VHF - Channel 16
AIS - both send and receive with all alarms on
Radar set to 48 miles with all alarms on
Garmin 7212 Chart plotter with 4 windows open being as follows:
radar, sirius satellite weather, Nav chart with radar overlay, and sonar with volt meter.
Delorme In Reach Satellite communicator
IPAD Mini with Garmin Blue Chart Mobile
All works well for long cruises. Just finished up crossing from Bradenton, FL to Carabelle, FL. returning from Key West to Dauphin Island, AL

[TeddyDiver]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but away from the range of AIS land based stations you are left only satellite based AIS which migh take several hours between the updates..

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

Correct me if I'm wrong, but away from the range of AIS land based stations you are left only satellite based AIS which migh take several hours between the updates..

AIS works by directly exchanging between vessels digital data by VHF on Channel 80. Shore or satellite stations are not needed for collision avoidance.

AIS signals are received on shore and by satellite but NOT for collision avoidance, but rather for general tracking of vessels. AIS receivers on board your boat don't need these stations -- they receive directly.

[kelbylinn]

Not sure on the AIS, but we did pick up a sailboat heading South at around 3:30 AM and we were out about 80 miles at that point. We also crossed on our way down to the Keys with a buddy boat and had each other on AIS the whole way down with no delays? I have no idea on the technical side of range, etc.

[TeddyDiver]

Thanks, so it works only as collision course alarm?

[Muckle Flugga]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

Thanks, so it works only as collision course alarm?

No. AIS transmits ship information such as course, speed, heading and course altering behaviour (so rotation speed and in which direction), as well as CPA and TCPA (Closest Point of Approach and Time to… ). As well as vessel type, often class, destination, current activity, and always callsign and MMSI, plus ship NAME, length, etc etc.

In other words a MASSIVELY useful resource all round and as Dockhead says, entirely automatic and bridge to bridge via digital VHF. Back in the old days I used to have to hail ships thusly: "Vessel of approximately 70 meters in length, green hull bulk carrier approximately 12 nautical miles bearing 120 from Black Rock Head, this is … Over"

Result? Too frequently silence. Now? Hit em with a voice call on 16 with MMSI, Call Sign and vessel name and they pretty much ALWAYS respond. Failing which you can also DSC call them using their MMSI.

AiS proximity alarms based upon automatically generated CPAs are very useful, but in my opinion are a poor second to RADAR as AIS only covers a very limited range of vessels actually out on the ocean wave.

[belle-isle]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

Correct me if I'm wrong, but away from the range of AIS land based stations you are left only satellite based AIS which migh take several hours between the updates..

Dockhead and Muckle Flugga are absolutely right, land-based stations and satellites have nothing to do with the nominal standard AIS. It's a ship-to-ship protocol which does not rely on anything else than the transponder on one ship and the receiver on the other. As such it is a very effective anticollision device anywhere.

A personal example : while crossing the Pacific Ocean from Chile to Easter Island, we spotted only one vessel during 19 days. Although I was standing watch outside at the end of the afternoon, I heard the alarm inside and went to have a look. To my surprise the cargo ship was not very far away. But in fact it was directly in the blinding glare of the sun. Eventually I saw it when it changed bearing, but I was thankful the AIS receiver was on nonetheless. We were 1'000 miles away from any land, and it worked perfectly and instantaneously, with updates of position, SOG and COG every 2 to 10 seconds (for a Class A vessel). In conclusion, and to go back on subject : even if there are many vessels not equipped with AIS or not transmitting on AIS, in my opinion an AIS receiver is a must-have turned on device offshore (or anywhere for that matter).