T&T: AIS, Gotcha-Monitoring VHF 16-13

[Mike Maurice]

The AIS situation is very complicated as we found out. Remember it 
involves not only Seattle Traffic, but British Columbia Traffic as well.

We had a Furuno AIS class A unit, which you may not be able to turn off 
the AIS transmitter and still have AIS reception to feed to the chart 
plotter.

This brings up the entire question about AIS boxes being fed GPS, but 
not passing along the GPS data if the AIS fails. I have never thought 
that a single source of GPS data should be used for a chart plotting 
system. But, most boats are set up that way and having a spare unit but 
no effective way to hook it up, is not much of a solution.

What actually happened was that we fell back on dual mode on the big VHF 
and listened to 16, 13.

Then we used the cell phone to talk to VTS. VTS got all excited at one 
point when we stopped to pick up a couple of drifting life jackets. 
Naturally they wanted to know if we were in difficulty as they hardly 
ever see AIS targets come to a halt in the middle of the Straits.

Technically we were in compliance with all the regs, since we only had 
to monitor 16. But, VTS had a practical problem, trying to cope with our 
being in their territory. By the way, in case it was not obvious, the 
boat was brand new and had never been out at night or used the AIS 
system except for testing.

One can make an argument that you need to monitor 3 channels, VTS, 16 
and 13, in order to be BOTH legal and effective in the case where you 
are not participating, but monitoring the VTS and are less than 20 
meters. After all the other motor boats less than 20 meters will expect 
you to respond on 16, since most of them don't know anything about 13.

And, one last comment. Since no one else has any experience with this 
exact situation in this particular VTS area, don't be surprised when I 
don't seem to be interested in uninformed opinions of which I hear there 
have been some.


Regards,
Mike

_____________________________________
Capt. Mike Maurice
Beaverton Oregon(Near Portland)