Boatnerd Discussion Forum

Some of the online vessel plotting map agencies are commercial adventures that require membership frees to use their restrictive extra features, as they use commercial satellites. AIS.boatnerd.com compiles data from volunteers hosting shore based ais stations, the more stations the better coverage, thus some gaps.

The captain/bridge crew of each vessel is suppose to update their ais with the destination comment before departure, but they are human and forget at times. One ship that unloaded at our docks rarely ever changed his, as it was a repeating trip. It's interesting to read the destination comments at the year's end of a season, as some are funny.

I use the KPLER marine traffic app and haven't had any of those problems.

Yes Denny;I have noticed that quite a few of the ships/companies do not put voyage destinations on their ais posts on the Boatnerd ais maps. A tad frustrating for retired sailors who kind of know something about places around the lakes and maybe like to recall them as ports once visited

Not sure about anyone else however, I’ve noticed on the boatnerd AIS that often their destinations will say and read n/a for some reason? I don’t know why this is as I’ve never seen it like this before and yet I don’t see or get that from other tracking websites just here on boatnerd AIS only for now.

Speaking of ais I have noticed quite often lately that ships are not updating there destination sometimes for days. I thought that the coast guard had a law that the ships had to keep a current destination at all times so that if something happens to a particular ship they have a general idea where it was.

Thank you to the 2 guests who replied to my comment and question about what I will now term as the “intermittent” and seemingly “disappearance”at times of vessels that I know are in transit on the Seaway.
I didn’t know about ground “clutter” or being outside of ais transmitter range.Viable explanations from both.

Most likely the boat has sailed beyond the coverage of the shore based antenna providing the data to whichever website you are using to view the map.

It sounds like an area with insufficient AIS receivers or ground clutter that is interfering with AIS transmissions.

Other than the military and special circumstances where it's a danger to be transmitting (such as at the height of Somali pirate attacks), it's generally an indicator of illicit behavior if a AIS transponder has been deliberately turned off while underway. Examples include illegal fishing or the Chinese salvage ship that has been destroying WWII wrecks that are the final resting place for the sailors that went down aboard them, like the USS Houston and HMS Prince of Wales off Indonesia that have been destroyed for scrap metal.

Is ais a “must be on at all times”type of thing that is legislated to be on at all times that a vessel is in the process of being in revenue generating movement on the Seaway system.
I ask this because I have noticed that a certain CSL vessel in the stone trade here on L Ontario will appear on the a I s map enroute to its load receiving port near me. It remains on the map while here unloading then for some reason I at a certain point on its return for another load segment; disappears from the ais map. Is it at the discretion of a captain or his company to use/not use the ais hookup? I’ve always understood that when in trade ais was mandatory.