How to Track Ships on the Ocean
Whether you're on the ocean yourself or sitting at your laptop beside a pool on the Amalfi Coast, you can now track the positions of major ships internationally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. What used to be available only to Vessel Traffic Services (VTS), which watches boat traffic, is now available to anyone. Tracking people you know who work on cruise lines or freighters is easy online. Alternatively, you can plot courses from onboard a vessel using marine radios, which is still common for smaller recreational boats.
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Things You'll Need
- AIS
- VHF radio
- Optional:
- Ham radio
- Nautical charts
- Electronic charts
- Plotting tools
Instructions
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Visit the sailwx.info website. This is one of the fastest ways of knowing a ship's position. The vessels participate in the VOS (Voluntary Observing Ships) scheme. The online charts show the location (latitude/longitude) of major cruise ships, tall ships, some cruising yachts, Alaska ferries, oceanographic research vessels and more. You can also enter the call sign of a particular vessel you know of and learn its location immediately and then track it for a period of time.
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Plot boat positions directly onto nautical charts if you are sea. More and more vessels are now required to have the AIS (Automatic Identification System), and even smaller boats are using them. The AIS is a super-instrument in that it indicates a ship's name, call sign, course, speed, classification, registration number and other information. If you're onboard a vessel using AIS, you'll have all this information for every boat around you that also has it (especially ships). You can plot the positions on a paper or electronic chart and track the updates.
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Use a ham radio, or VHF, in combination with your charts and plotting tools if onboard without an AIS. Boats in your vicinity will periodically report positions, which you can plot on a chart. During yacht races, for example, there's a morning roll call. Each vessel's coordinates are radioed in to a lead, follow or support boat that keeps all the records. You can plot each boat's position and track its course.
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Keep a log if you are following a specific vessel. Say four of your college buddies have taken off to sail from Seattle to Mexico. They can either contact you through onboard computers, or you can communicate by ham radio. Get the latitude and longitude and time to add to your log book and then plot the information on nautical charts. Their coordinates are often from a Global Positioning System (GPS) so are quite accurate. You can plot each day's location reports and follow them all the way down the coast.
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Tips & Warnings
Knowing the call letters and name of a vessel you want to track helps you when listening in or talking over marine radios. Get the information in advance from family or friends -- and ask for a float plan, which is their intended sailing route.
EPIRBs (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons) are still an important piece of equipment to have onboard; however the AIS is a huge boon to safety and security at sea because it logs a vessel's data automatically without waiting until an emergency sets it off.
You can also learn about the weather at the various ships' locations. If you are studying progress, you'll be able to discern the impact of weather on a ship's progress.
References
Resources
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