Visit our Popular Forums

Andrewpatrol · 06-03-2022, 02:39

I have Jimmy Cornell’s pilot charts book and can’t see shipping lanes (old eyes?)
Just out of curiosity are they shown on NOAA pilot charts and are they more or less accurate?
Thanks.

**Pete7** · 06-03-2022, 03:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrewpatrol

I have Jimmy Cornell’s pilot charts book and can’t see shipping lanes (old eyes?)
Just out of curiosity are they shown on NOAA pilot charts and are they more or less accurate?
Thanks.

You mean this sort of thing. This is a screenshot from the on line Navionics Chart Viewer and shows Lands End in the UK.

Pete

Andrewpatrol · 06-03-2022, 03:14

No, that’s a separation zone for headlands generally.

What I mean are lines that show the general routes that shipping travels between continents or large land masses.
This is to allow me to become more aware of keeping a lookout or pay more attention to the AIS

Benz · 06-03-2022, 03:32

I've seen those on charts from time to time, but I'm not sure they apply so much these days: weather routing makes ships go out of what would be the straightest line, and there's no official tracks that ships must follow. Areas of heavier traffic will be obvious, like near New York or the English Channel, but you're not guaranteed to NOT see a ship anywhere. As long as it's a dark and stormy night, and it's really inconvenient to you, you can guarantee a close encounter with a giant ship.

sailorF54 · 06-03-2022, 03:47

You can use the density map setting on

https://www.marinetraffic.com

e.g. the Engish Channel

**hpeer** · 06-03-2022, 05:04

This is Vox graphic will give a good idea of distribution. Some areas are more irregular than I thought.

https://www.vox.com/2016/4/25/115031...ing-routes-map

jackdale · 06-03-2022, 06:48

AMVER has historical density plots.

https://www.amver.com/Reports/DensityPlots

JBP · 06-03-2022, 06:56

On the great lakes, there are "recommended tracks" for shipping. They are represented by a purple dash line on raster charts, and a black dash arrow thingy line in vector charts (well, that's how OpenCPN does them).

SVTatia · 06-03-2022, 07:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrewpatrol

I have Jimmy Cornell’s pilot charts book and can’t see shipping lanes (old eyes?)

Just out of curiosity are they shown on NOAA pilot charts and are they more or less accurate?

Thanks.

Not really the answer you were looking for, but Cornells book and Pilot Charts are planning tools, and shipping lanes are not relevant as it relates to weather observations.

Chris31415 · 06-03-2022, 08:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackdale

AMVER has historical density plots.

https://www.amver.com/Reports/DensityPlots

That’s a nice resource.

Andrewpatrol · 06-03-2022, 19:28

Thanks all. I had a quick look at ANVER site and as an example of a future voyage from Hawaii to Alaska it seems there is not any particular route that I’d imagined or at most 6 routes but there seems a dense spiderweb and so a good lookout needs to be maintained at all times.
MarineTraffic is a good resource too.
I think what I had seen once or twice were old days sailing ship routes which were more weather constrained.

El Pinguino · 07-03-2022, 10:30

There is no such thing as 'shipping lanes' on the high seas, just areas of greater or lesser traffic density.
The track from Hawaii to Alaska cuts across just so many routes. Multiply the number of ports between Panama and Alaska by the number of ports between Yokohama and Singapore and that's the number of shipping lanes.
Close north of Hawaii and that northern track through the Aleutians seem to be the busy spots just now.

I use marinetraffic pre-voyage to spot where large concentrations of fishing boats are working so I can try and avoid them (2nd pic) or at least know where I am going to encounter them. They do move around but in the short term - maybe a week or so - it seems to work.

Some parts of the world 'shipping lanes' are fairly well defined ( 3rd pic). The big red smudge uper left is where there were masses of fishing boats in 2019.

Sailing north from Antofagasta I laid a course up the coast just inside the 200 mile Peruvian economic zone and didn't see one while staying far enough offshore to avoid any encounters with local boats..