Mar 2, 2007
So while I was on my AIS soap box yesterday, Raymarine put up a podcast on the subject that I helped make a couple of months ago. It was done over the phone, and without a script, but some editor clipped out enough of my “ums and ahs” that I think it sounds pretty good. I’m also impressed by Raymarine’s apparent commitment to education over marketing. This was made well before I knew a thing about the Raymarine AIS250 and toward the end I went into my concerns about one-channel-at-a-time receivers. Raymarine could have easily edited that bit out of this sixteen minute podcast, but they didn’t. Not that Raymarine doesn’t know a thing or two about marketing. I was delighted to hear CEO Terry Carlson’s intro, in which he not only mentions Panbo, but spells out the URL! This is #8 in the podcast series; others deal with fishing, offshore sailboat racing, weather, etc. and you can even subscribe to an RSS/XML feed to be notified of new material. Pretty hip for a marine electronics company!
Mar 1, 2007
Word of ACR’s Nauticast B started an interesting, if sometimes fretful, conversation yesterday, and, whereas I’ve got the bully pit here (guest bloggers welcome), I’m going to exercise it. While the concerns about over-crowded AIS screens, Class B filters, and minimal big ship AIS plotting minded by minimal seamen all have truth to them—and should be part of every new AIS user’s education—I think their overall importance may be exaggerated. Here are some reasons why:
- While I’m sure that San Francisco Bay in heavy fog can be terrifying, in my experience the scariest contacts with shipping weren’t in crowded ports but out in the open ocean, where any bridge with half decent equipment and personnel will likely be monitoring Class B targets. Lord knows there are some dunderheads driving very, very large objects out there, but I do not buy the notion that a high percentage of commercial sailors are oblivious to small boats.
- This photo I took on Penobscot Bay illustrates another scenario. Shipping is light here—I’ve never seen two underway at the same time—but the traffic lane that runs down the bay crosses the route of almost every cruising boat going in or out of four active harbors. And it can get so foggy that…
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