Finding (captain?) Nemo? (UPDATED September 18)

On Thursday, September 15, the GPS receiver on Braesail’s AIS system quit working. We can see other boats just fine, but you (and the other boats) can’t see us. This is not an immediate safety hazard, because we have other GPS receivers on board, but we will try to get it working as soon as we can. Until the end of September, you can track us on our PredictWind tracker (below), but as we expect not to need satellite communications after we get south of Campbell River, we will discontinue our Iridium subscription. I hope to get AIS up before then.

There are two ways of tracking Braesail: AIS and Iridium. Each has different advantages and disadvantages:

• AIS
  • Updates every 10 minutes
  • Normally only if in range of a land station (satellite extra cost)
  • Provides speed, direction, location
• Iridium
  • Updates every 60 minutes
  • Only out of range if Braesail is up a fjord that blocks satellite transmission
  • Provides location only

Your best AIS coverage where we are sailing is Marine Traffic:

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:4132492/zoom:10

PredictWind (the company that provides our Iridium service, and gives the best weather reports for sailors) gives us a page with our track and shows the current weather forecast at our location:

https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/SV_Braesail/

The PredictWind tracking page is far better, most of the time, from now on out. As of May 24, the PredictWind tracking page has us to within a few hundred feet of where we are anchored—and it even includes a map. The last time I checked (before we got into Fury Cove) the MarineTraffic app showed that we were still just outside of Port McNeill. It just caught up with us so, as they say at the EPA. “your mileage may vary”.