I would like to admit I don't like big ocean going cruisers , tankers etc they scare me. ( especially at night ) . I'm bringing my boat from Scarborough to Sydney in a few weeks so I wanted AIS . Oh and I'm cheap .
Looked over the forum and went with Daisy AIS , gstar4 GPS puck and laptop running open cpn . Tested it today and it all seems to work ok from the shore. Will take the output to my chart plotter on board as well . If I can do it ,any one can . Pretty straight forward instructions from all suppliers.

Down load the app findship

Does daisy ais transmit your location so that others can see you?

Apps such as findship, marine traffic and the like rely on the other boats AIS being read by a third party, and then transmitted to you via the mobile network. You may not have mobile coverage, there can be delays, drop outs etc etc. Marine traffic has lost us for days on end during this years trip to the Whitsundays. No way would I rely on one of those as a safety measure.

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LMY said..
Does daisy ais transmit your location so that others can see you?

Apps such as findship, marine traffic and the like rely on the other boats AIS being read by a third party, and then transmitted to you via the mobile network. You may not have mobile coverage, there can be delays, drop outs etc etc. Marine traffic has lost us for days on end during this years trip to the Whitsundays. No way would I rely on one of those as a safety measure.

I agree with LMY. Those apps might be useful to see who's around when you're sitting in an anchorage or something but not to actually avoid a ship moving at 25 knots. They are free/cheap though so I get the suggestion.We bought a Stand alone Vesper Marine unit a few years ago. Works great and has it's own screen. It is of great comfort to be able to weave in between a big ship anchorage or make adjustments to avoid a steaming ship who's still at the horizon with this tool. The added benefit of the unit is that it has an excellent low power anchor alarm.

We are cheap also but decided to buy this one after sailing Adeliable to Sydney in which the big ships were often the scariest aspect. I think it was $400

No it doesn't transmit , I wanted a portable system to move to whatever boat I am sailing on . I tried the apps but you need internet . I will at some point fit an AIS transponder to my boat .

If big ships are such a danger, why is there not a single record of one running over a yacht in Australian coastal waters, as far as I know? It's sometimes thought that the big steel schooner Patanela may have been run down off Sydney in 1988, but even if that was the case we are talking about a one in 30 year incident. After all, ships are big things with bright lights; they are not hard to see. Lobster pots, tinnies, other yachts, powerboats and whales often do not carry AIS so you still need to keep a lookout anyway.

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Chris 249 said..
If big ships are such a danger, why is there not a single record of one running over a yacht in Australian coastal waters, as far as I know? It's sometimes thought that the big steel schooner Patanela may have been run down off Sydney in 1988, but even if that was the case we are talking about a one in 30 year incident. After all, ships are big things with bright lights; they are not hard to see. Lobster pots, tinnies, other yachts, powerboats and whales often do not carry AIS so you still need to keep a lookout anyway.

Jessica Watson might disagree with you here!

I recently got a dAISy 2+, delivered from US in 3 days, had a old crappy piece of coax and broken antenna at home to test, plugged it into Opencpn and could see the ferry's on the Harbour nearby.... so easy. Antenna was about 2 meters off the ground surrounded by unit blocks, was surprised to see anything.
Will install on the boat with AIS masthead splitter when home next.
Also got the $5 WIFI module for fun, apparently can use it to get AIS on Navionics. Has anyone tried that yet?

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Chris 249 said..
If big ships are such a danger, why is there not a single record of one running over a yacht in Australian coastal waters, as far as I know? It's sometimes thought that the big steel schooner Patanela may have been run down off Sydney in 1988, but even if that was the case we are talking about a one in 30 year incident. After all, ships are big things with bright lights; they are not hard to see. Lobster pots, tinnies, other yachts, powerboats and whales often do not carry AIS so you still need to keep a lookout anyway.

also know of a few trawlers have been hit off se QLD waters

And how many butt clenching near misses? They probably don't get reported. A quick look at marine traffic and I see a large number of 150-330 meter long vessels traveling Bass straight to Sydney at between 11-20 knots. Even just during a clear night it's difficult to guess their course until they are maybe a lot closer than is comfortable, and if they're bearing down on you at 20 knots and your doing 6 knots on a crossing course, then things can get hectic, quickly. There was a good safety vid on YouTube covering this and it certainly convinced me of the dangers and how quickly people get into trouble with large shipping, I'll see if I can dig it up.

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boty said..

also know of a few trawlers have been hit off se QLD waters

How many of those trawlers were not transponding their position by not having their AIS turned on so as to not give their position away to other trawlers. Just a thought

Offshore today testing my new VHF, Standard Horizon 2200E with inbuilt GPS and AIS. I have the SS masthead aerial that always worked well with the old radio but todays technology is impressive. I can see where the money went! I could hear both sides of the conversations from Narooma and Sydney. GPS works as advertized and I had contacts on the AIS. Waiting on a cable to connect to OpenCPN and will use the radio's GPS to drive OpenCPN and keep the puck as backup. The little screen on the radio for AIS only goes out to 10 miles but it might be a different story when connected to my 22 inch monitor.
Of course while I was fooling around with technology I was busy dodging whales!

Just looking at your new radio online. What did you need to do to integrate it with your laptop?

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Ramona said..

Chris 249 said..
If big ships are such a danger, why is there not a single record of one running over a yacht in Australian coastal waters, as far as I know? It's sometimes thought that the big steel schooner Patanela may have been run down off Sydney in 1988, but even if that was the case we are talking about a one in 30 year incident. After all, ships are big things with bright lights; they are not hard to see. Lobster pots, tinnies, other yachts, powerboats and whales often do not carry AIS so you still need to keep a lookout anyway.

Jessica Watson might disagree with you here!

Fair call, I did forget her since she was not sunk, but she was apparently using AIS both receiving and sending at the time of the collision, as well as having radar. So it's not as if AIS is a cure-all and perhaps over-reliance on it may be worse than just keeping a good lookout!

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Chris 249 said..

Ramona said..

Chris 249 said..
If big ships are such a danger, why is there not a single record of one running over a yacht in Australian coastal waters, as far as I know? It's sometimes thought that the big steel schooner Patanela may have been run down off Sydney in 1988, but even if that was the case we are talking about a one in 30 year incident. After all, ships are big things with bright lights; they are not hard to see. Lobster pots, tinnies, other yachts, powerboats and whales often do not carry AIS so you still need to keep a lookout anyway.

Jessica Watson might disagree with you here!

Fair call, I did forget her since she was not sunk, but she was apparently using AIS both receiving and sending at the time of the collision, as well as having radar. So it's not as if AIS is a cure-all and perhaps over-reliance on it may be worse than just keeping a good lookout!

Sounds like she didn't have AIS and Radar target alarms set on her system or the alarm boundaries were set too close to her boat. Electronics are only as good as they're set up. If she didn't have alarms set, then the issue was that she wasn't looking at her plotter screen often enough. My Raymarine system allows me to set target alarms, so an audible alarm goes off if a vessel comes within a certain distance/radius or time to safe distance. No I would agree that AIS by itself isn't a cure all, but it's still a good tool. If you're going down the electronics path then AIS and Radar along with a proper watch are needed to cover all the bases at night in my opinion. So those fishing vessels with AIS turned off, will still set off a radar alarm. The electronics, if properly set up, still give a broader picture and they take some of the guess work out of a given situation, which in turn takes some stress off. For anyone who's actually used AIS at night, seen a target appear on the screen, queried it to bring up the vessels size, destination, course and speed, then the value of the system as a tool is immediately obvious.

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MorningBird said..
Just looking at your new radio online. What did you need to do to integrate it with your laptop?

Not using the laptop now. Present set up is a Dell Wyse running windows 10 driving a 22 inch monitor. Shortly changing to a 24 inch 12v TV. I had to order a serial adaptor cable for the radio to the computor.

www.ebay.com.au/itm/Durable-FTDI-FT232RL-USB-to-Serial-Adapter-Module-TTL-RS232-Cables-Black-6-PinAU/223581593445?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

Several choices of connecting the wires depending whether you use the radios GPS or not.
Reading the manual last night I can change the range for recieving AIS to 30 miles on the small screen but can expect greater. The navigation features on this unit are equivilent to a Garmin handheld so it's a good stand alone nav back up too.

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Chris 249 said..

Ramona said..

Chris 249 said..
If big ships are such a danger, why is there not a single record of one running over a yacht in Australian coastal waters, as far as I know? It's sometimes thought that the big steel schooner Patanela may have been run down off Sydney in 1988, but even if that was the case we are talking about a one in 30 year incident. After all, ships are big things with bright lights; they are not hard to see. Lobster pots, tinnies, other yachts, powerboats and whales often do not carry AIS so you still need to keep a lookout anyway.

Jessica Watson might disagree with you here!

Fair call, I did forget her since she was not sunk, but she was apparently using AIS both receiving and sending at the time of the collision, as well as having radar. So it's not as if AIS is a cure-all and perhaps over-reliance on it may be worse than just keeping a good lookout!

right on cant agree more

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2bish said..

Chris 249 said..

Ramona said..

Chris 249 said..
If big ships are such a danger, why is there not a single record of one running over a yacht in Australian coastal waters, as far as I know? It's sometimes thought that the big steel schooner Patanela may have been run down off Sydney in 1988, but even if that was the case we are talking about a one in 30 year incident. After all, ships are big things with bright lights; they are not hard to see. Lobster pots, tinnies, other yachts, powerboats and whales often do not carry AIS so you still need to keep a lookout anyway.

Jessica Watson might disagree with you here!

Fair call, I did forget her since she was not sunk, but she was apparently using AIS both receiving and sending at the time of the collision, as well as having radar. So it's not as if AIS is a cure-all and perhaps over-reliance on it may be worse than just keeping a good lookout!

Sounds like she didn't have AIS and Radar target alarms set on her system or the alarm boundaries were set too close to her boat. Electronics are only as good as they're set up. If she didn't have alarms set, then the issue was that she wasn't looking at her plotter screen often enough. My Raymarine system allows me to set target alarms, so an audible alarm goes off if a vessel comes within a certain distance/radius or time to safe distance. No I would agree that AIS by itself isn't a cure all, but it's still a good tool. If you're going down the electronics path then AIS and Radar along with a proper watch are needed to cover all the bases at night in my opinion. So those fishing vessels with AIS turned off, will still set off a radar alarm. The electronics, if properly set up, still give a broader picture and they take some of the guess work out of a given situation, which in turn takes some stress off. For anyone who's actually used AIS at night, seen a target appear on the screen, queried it to bring up the vessels size, destination, course and speed, then the value of the system as a tool is immediately obvious.

She had the alarms on but sailing solo coastal in shipping lanes she said she had to sleep after going through some shipping. She slept through the alarm.
If you are in shipping or fishing areas you need a physical watch. In the open ocean the probability of hitting a ship are so minimal you are lucky to see one.
AIS is nice to have but it's contribution to safety is minimal. Poorly used it is dangerous.

Interestingly, solo teen sailor, Jesse Martin had what he believed to be a near miss with a tanker in the Atlantic.
He had turned his nav lights off and wasn't running his radar ( to save power) and got the shock of his life when a tanker passed a couple of hundred meters behind him lit up like a xmas tree. He believes that the tanker must have seen him because of the way the tanker was lit up,, but he was too ashamed to call the tanker on vhf, fearing a stern lecture from the captain. He changed his mind about not running his nav lights.
Given the same circumstances today, a simple VHF/AIS radio combo may have taken the "Shock" out of the equation

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Ramona said..

MorningBird said..
Just looking at your new radio online. What did you need to do to integrate it with your laptop?

Not using the laptop now. Present set up is a Dell Wyse running windows 10 driving a 22 inch monitor. Shortly changing to a 24 inch 12v TV. I had to order a serial adaptor cable for the radio to the computor.

www.ebay.com.au/itm/Durable-FTDI-FT232RL-USB-to-Serial-Adapter-Module-TTL-RS232-Cables-Black-6-PinAU/223581593445?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

Several choices of connecting the wires depending whether you use the radios GPS or not.
Reading the manual last night I can change the range for recieving AIS to 30 miles on the small screen but can expect greater. The navigation features on this unit are equivilent to a Garmin handheld so it's a good stand alone nav back up too.

The Dell Wyse are a great little PC. I swapped from using Intel Nuc's to the Wyse for video decoding in commercial environments, good bang for your buck.

Having sailed many ocean miles, don't be cheap spend what you have to spend. Its a great tool in the tool box but one can never stop having eyes on deck keeping watch. I was never concerned about what I could see on the AIS...its what you cant see on the AIS but what you see with the eyes....