“Automatic Identification System,” more commonly referred to as AIS, is both a piece of electronics equipment, and a system presently in use among both large vessels and small for keeping track of one another. I’ve referred to this device several times over the course of the blog, but it really deserves its own post. Now is a nice time because the previous post, “Grease Pencils,” happens to include the AIS that’s installed aboard AUKLET, in the top photo. That’s the gray screen in the lower right corner of that first picture, also copied above. In a perfect world, I would have a photo of the gizmo in operation, displaying a variety of other vessels in the neighborhood. The next time that the boat is in the water, I’m going to remember to take that picture! In the meantime, there’s a good bit to say about it.

The AIS system uses a particular kind of device, but there are quite a number of different pieces of equipment available from different manufacturers that actually do the job. Like a VHF radio, any company that wants to can produce their own versions. Some varieties have their own screen, and others are little black boxes that connect to an existing chartplotter, or to a computer. In addition to some kind of screen, the equipment requires an external VHF antenna, and almost always a dedicated external GPS antenna.

I chose the “Vesper Marine Watchmate 850” (nope, not receiving anything) for several reasons. Most important for my situation, it has its own screen, and uses less power than equivalent competitors. It’s also waterproof, which relieves stress about splashes and rain in the companionway, where it’s mounted for visibility from both cabin and cockpit. In some situations, this model does not need a separate GPS antenna, but the tech person at the company suggested that it would be more secure to have one, with which I agreed – why go through all this only to have questions about GPS signal acquisition. The small external GPS antenna can be mounted flush on the top of the cabin, and has not been a problem.

Overall, the installation did feel like a bit of a production: VHF antenna on the mast, cable through a cable clam on the deck, GPS antenna hole in the cabin, cables run back to the equipment, and to top it all off, wiring for power. Sheesh! But the first time that I was out in Long Island sound, and the gizmo told me about every ferry for 12 miles around, it was all worth it.

AIS systems work using VHF radio signals, transmitting and receiving in short, digital bursts (rather like text messaging in cell phones). As a result, even when transmitting, electricity usage is quite small. I have often wished for radar, especially in the fog, but the power requirements have felt unmanageable. AIS now handles a big part of what radar can do, and in some ways does a better job. All large commercial vessels are now required to use it, and it’s becoming quite popular with recreational vessels. Not so much with commercial fishing boats, but I’m willing to bet that this might gradually change, especially because the equipment means that you can find your friends in the fog, keeping track of entire fleets with ease. In the meantime, both large ships and fast-moving ferries use AIS consistently. Additionally, fast-moving whalewatch vessels, and excursion boats (like the ones with 50 people with fishing rods over the side) also use it. This has been a great blessing, as the high-speed whalewatch boats have been a particular hazard in the places where I sail.

The built-in screen is laid out like a radar screen, with your own boat in the middle and concentric circles around it showing range; on that screen you can see every boat that has an AIS transmitter. In addition to the position of each boat, its little triangle symbol shows which way it’s going, and informational boxes tell you everything from the course and speed of each of those targets to their names and how close you will come if both of you hold the same course and speed; it also tells you how long it’s going to take to arrive at that closest point. The gizmo is busy calculating all that, and depending on how you set it up it’ll beep to draw your attention to any potential problem.

It was nice to hear about the daytime ferries in Long Island sound; the first time the new piece of equipment showed me a whalewatch boat moving at 27 knots in thick fog and going to pass at 1/4 mile, I started seriously blessing it. When the whalewatch captain called me on the radio to talk about that the return from my (giant) radar reflector was entirely lost in the “clutter” on his screen, but that my AIS signal was perfectly clear, I was ready to hug everyone remotely connected to this piece of equipment being on my boat – including the folks in New Zealand who built it.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the fog worrying about getting run over, by everything from fast ferries to enormous ships. Peering into the grayness, and listening intently, taking bearings on ships’ foghorns, reassuring myself that the bearings are changing with each two-minute interval’s blast, which demonstrates that the ships are passing somewhere else. And then listening again, for the next one. You can say, “don’t go out in the fog,” but that doesn’t do much for you if the fog arrives three hours after you’ve hauled up the anchor and sailed away… AIS doesn’t solve the problem of smaller fast-moving boats that don’t use it, and there’s still a lot of listening, and peering, but some of the problems are vastly reduced. Even on a clear day, a ship can sneak up awfully fast – but not now! It’s a real relief.

Another interesting thing that happens with the AIS is that a whole lot of boats never turn them off, even when they are settled in their harbor, or at a dock for the night. I don’t quite understand this, but it has the fascinating effect of marking major harbors’ positions on the screen. All those resting boats make a black patch of overlapping triangles right there on the harbor’s location, that’s impossible to miss.

For example, say you have the screen resolution adjusted for 12 miles out from your position, and Bar Harbor is about 6 miles away. This happened, that night that there was no wind and I floated around watching the phosphorescent streaks from the fish. Lying down to rest, with the AIS screen lit softly in the dark, you could see clearly where the boat was in relation to Bar Harbor, without doing anything at all. It was possible to see if the boat was drifting where it shouldn’t, or to confirm that it wasn’t going anywhere, with just a glance.

Now, if I would simply get a handheld chartplotter, I could be doing this on a regular basis with a lot more precision. But I’m a holdout, and continue with everything from traditional navigation techniques to plotting the latitude and longitude coordinates provided by the GPS. Something about not relying too heavily on fallible electronics… But on those long overnight sails, I sure have enjoyed that easy little trick!

This particular AIS unit gives one the choice to either be transmitting or to switch to “receive only,” which uses less electricity, and tells you about other boats but does not tell them about you. I find that I go back and forth between these settings, transmitting at night where there might be any traffic at all, and always in the fog, but not so much in daytime and good weather. As far as I can see, the biggest potential problem with leaving the transmitter off is if another AIS-equipped vessel is approaching, also with its transmitter off. In this case, neither can see the other, whereas if one has one’s own transmitter operating, at least the other vessel will be alerted to any close approach.

In spite of this issue, being almost entirely under sail, I sometimes turn off the transmitter because it’s just too embarrassing to think of my crazy, halting progress, tacking in minimal wind and who knows what current, all over some tiny stretch of coast for hours – and having that not only observed, but recorded by every AIS-equipped boat in range of the antenna on top of the mast. Of course with the AIS placed in “silent mode,” the boat will still show up on other boats’ radar – but at least the radar image won’t have my name!

As if that tracking embarrassment wasn’t enough, AIS transmissions are also picked up and included on a website that’s open to the general public. I haven’t investigated this – it’s possible that the website is something like marinetraffic.com – but theoretically if you know the name of a transmitting vessel you can do a search, and locate that vessel’s position. Suzanne tried to find AUKLET last year on the computer, but wasn’t successful, even though I did have the transmitter turned on at the time. I’ve been kind of happy about that, and have not made an effort to learn the system – it’s a wild world, all these electronics, and has already far crossed the line into “invasive.” It took me about five years to get over the concept of caller ID on the telephone, though nowadays I do finally like it. Maybe that’ll happen with my feelings about AIS tracking on the computer, but for now, it sure is nice to “run silent.” It’s always a treat to leave the transmitter off, and to sail around with more regular anonymity, sort of like how boats used to be. Even though I do like knowing about the ships.

So that’s about it. The big brother aspect isn’t so exciting, but I mostly think back to that whalewatch boat speeding along in the fog, that never would’ve seen my giant radar reflector lost in the sea clutter, and was originally headed straight toward us. It eventually passed at a half a mile, and I still couldn’t see it. But thanks to the AIS, I knew exactly where it was.

Yesterday the wind blew from the south, and was forecast to really blow in the night and into today. I was still anchored off of Gayle and Bruce’s house, just a little ways inside Long Cove from where it joins Tenants Harbor. Nice visits, and Patty K. came over from Friendship and out to the boat in Gayle and Bruce’s dinghy. So many thanks to all – what a nice time over there!

With the big wind and a bunch of rain coming, first thing in the morning up went the sails, and I was off to investigate Long Cove further up, even beyond the pretty anchorage at Clark Island, which has been a favorite in the past. Looking at the chart, one can see a good-looking spot with enough water even at low tide, tucked in back of the point on the west side of Long Cove. Shortly I was anchored in back of that point in about 5 feet of water at low tide, near some lobster boats on moorings. Sure did look nice!

By the time the tide was about halfway up, the extra protecting rocks were starting to go underwater, but you wouldn’t think that it would be a big problem since the cove is so long and narrow. However! Waves and more waves. Not dangerous – more like an endless stream of boat wakes. Rocking the boat enough that you would not have wanted to try cooking, or anything else precarious like that. Rats! And the culprit? The steep rocky shore on the far side of where you turn the corner to get in back of this point. Reflecting waves, just like playing pool and banking the ball off the side of the pool table, to get around the obstacle of other balls.

This happened once before, also taking me by surprise, in the East Harbor at Sorrento. There is an island perfectly positioned in just the same way, with the same effect in a south wind. At least in the present situation there are no waves coming across a bar from the opposite direction, giving the boat the uncomfortable jerking roll that it had in Sorrento. But rolling for the top half of the tide – meaning six hours total, coming in and going out – was really a bit much! And I wasn’t looking forward to doing it again in the middle of the night.

So when the tide went down again, making it possible to see the locations of the generous collection of rocks in this area, I decided to try to move further in to the shallow area toward the back of my little corner behind that point. Sails up, anchor up, and lots of zigzagging back and forth with the lead line (galvanized shackle on the end of a string, put over the side to check depths) looking for that sweet spot that would be out of the waves but still with just enough water to float at low tide.

In the end, it was a compromise. Not quite enough water to float, and not really far enough in to get entirely away from those waves. But it was livable, and down went the anchor. One of the nice characteristics of a lead line, as opposed to the electronic depth sounder, is that when it hits the bottom you can feel the way it hits. Soft mud is easy to differentiate from rocks, and after a good bit of zigzagging and sounding, one has touched a lot of the bottom in the area. It was reassuring to have hit mud every time.

The other nice thing about the low-tech approach to this entire move, with sails rather than motor, was that I could really push the edges of the available water, without worrying about running the propeller into the bottom. If I ran the boat onto the mud using the sails it was likely to be no big deal to push it off again with the pole, or at worst to wait for the tide to come up later on. I had debated just turning the motor on and not dealing with sails or sculling, all just to move the hundred and fifty feet into the wind when it was the end of the day. But by the time I was sailing back and forth in the 18 inches of water where I was hoping to anchor, I realized those sails were really doing me a favor! Not to mention that the motorless record since the day of arriving in Belfast got to stay intact for another day…

So the anchor went down in the new location, which in the end had a depth of about 2 feet at an hour and a half before low tide. It was coming up on 5:30 in the afternoon, getting ready to be a nice evening – breezy, but comfortably warm in the 60s. Doing out the tide math, the boat was definitely going to be at least partially into the mud at low. And here’s the fun part: in this very soft mud I had the opportunity to try something that somebody told me about a little while back.

When I was anchored at Dyer Island outside of Milbridge, still on the way east, I had the opportunity to visit with a fellow named Tim. He was out in a very sweet looking open motor boat that day, but he’s also a sailor of small boats, and told me about a neat trick for going down in the mud in a boat with a long, shallow keel. Just as the boat starts to touch the bottom, you make it rock back and forth. He talked about standing at the mast and using it as a lever, but on this boat it seems more effective, getting a better roll, to stand in the cockpit and shift one’s weight back and forth. As the boat rocks, the keel scrapes at the mud, digging a hole. After a bit you stop rocking (digging) and let the boat float until it starts to come down again on the bottom. Then it’s time for another round of rocking. The theory is that by the time the boat is down too far to let you rock it back and forth, it has created enough of a low spot in the bottom that the boat can settle upright, rather than over on its side. Pretty neat trick!

So I did a bunch of rocking and settling and more rocking, just for fun. Between the softness of the mud and the amount of water still left at low tide, it worked like a charm. Eventually the boat wouldn’t rock, and was no longer shifting in the wind, but it was nicely upright. The tide didn’t go out a whole lot further, but it was pleasant to be level for that hour – and not bounced around by any waves at all – and it was great fun to think that the boat had dug a hole in the soft mud! For an added bonus, I was indeed far enough in behind my protecting point to have a bit less rolling when the water came back up, and the water was so shallow that for quite a while I knew for absolute sure that nobody was going to run into the boat!

As it turned out, the high tide in the middle of the night was pretty peaceful as far as waves, and the cove was very peaceful in other ways, and perfectly lovely. Just now the tide is almost high again, and there is more rolling than there was in the night, but not as much as yesterday midday. So I’m considering the exercise a success, at least so far.

This morning I went out and set the second anchor – insurance for the extra high winds that were forecast for this morning, and in a good spot for when the wind goes around to the northwest tonight. If all goes well, tomorrow will be a sailing day, in one of those fine, fall northwest winds. Here’s hoping!

Today is a bonus rest day. After five nights in Belfast, a north wind was forecast for the next day (mostly a make-believe story the weather people tell to cruisers trying to head toward home) and off I went. Light wind, that eventually filled in from the southwest, but the tide was going our way starting at about 6 AM. It runs hard enough through West Penobscot Bay to actually make progress, even when there isn’t much for wind.

The extra treat was that Joanne, of the Pacific Seacraft 25, came for a sail here on AUKLET, for the first half of the day. What a pleasure that was! We left the harbor with the sun rising and a tiny breeze, and two other sailboats also under sail. Joanne’s friend Paul, out for the day from Belfast in his cruising sailboat, JURA, and Margot and Ed on their very sweet wooden ketch FROLIC. Eventually there was a little more breeze, and they all left us in the dust, both of those boats having substantially longer water lines as well as plenty of sail area to match. But it was fun to be actually getting ahead of them earlier, when we had some good luck with being in the right spot for riffles on the water.

Later, when it was time for Joanne to get back to Belfast, Paul very kindly came back our way and picked her up off the boat. This particular maneuver, of crew transfer underway, was new to me with such a big boat – a Westsail 32 – and I’m still thinking on how that went. Among other things, it goes against basic intuition to be sailing along and have a giant boat come alongside, under power, a couple of feet away, water moving at about 3 knots under the boats. Sheesh! I did let out the main sheet so AUKLET quit going quite so fast, which Paul managed to match in spite of some lack of proper communication on my part, so then it didn’t feel quite so hair-raising. Paul had put out three big fenders, complete with fuzzy jackets, and when the two boats came right next to each other Joanne tossed her dry bag onto JURA and then very nimbly hopped over. This exercise is not something that I really want to do again! Though it was lovely to not have to go all the way in to a dock, and then back out to continue the rather slow progress we’d been making in the fussy wind.

Later that day I went into Cradle Cove, near the south end of Islesboro Island, and there was FROLIC, the woooden ketch! The following day was forecast to be southwest wind, and it turned out that they and I were planning to stay and wait for the next northerly. We made a plan to visit the next morning, and I went off to anchor. Next morning, at a nice, civilized hour, they arrived in their lovely rowing dinghy that Ed built. We talked about all sorts of things, but the part that relates to events from the day before is that Ed reminded me that when the Coast Guard wants to come aboard your boat they use that same technique – one boat is to maintain course and speed, and the other boat comes up alongside, with both of them underway. I’m thinking that this avoids problems with uncontrolled rolling in waves, but I still don’t like the vulnerability for the person making the transfer – if someone were to fall between the boats, it would be a very, very bad situation. And even without the transfer, that was one very large bunch of very shiny, well-kept boat awfully close to an unwanted bump at speed! I’d rather have delicacies of steering not have such severe consequences…

It occurs to me now that when the Coast Guard does this maneuver I believe that they are usually using their large inflatable boat, which has a much softer surface, all the way around, compared to a big fiberglass sailboat with a few fenders. If I had to do it again, I would suggest more fenders, both further forward and further aft from the ones in the middle where you expect the boats to touch, just in case. And Margot and Ed suggested that tying the boats together, as for a tow “on the hip,” would be far more secure than simply holding nearby and scrambling.

I’m quite open to comments on this successful but rather fraught adventure!

So now I’m still in Cradle Cove. FROLIC – with Margot and Ed and Joshua Slocum the cat – were on their way this morning. They’re also bound for Tenants Harbor, as a next destination along the way home. But the forecast for today, and the actual look once morning came, gave me that feeling that I would be spending a lot of time floating in the current between occasional bits of wind from an assortment of directions. I could’ve been wrong about this – and a couple of times there was a sweet looking north breeze, and I had definite second thoughts – but now it’s early afternoon and I’m glad that I stayed. It’s 20 miles to Tenants Harbor, and an enormous north wind is forecast for tomorrow. If all goes well, I should have a nice ride in the morning and get to go the whole way.

With a name like Joy Bay, how could one not go there? Actually, it’s a bit off the beaten track, and not so many people do go up that way – this is so metaphorical! But it’s a beautiful spot, and was a really good place to get out of the weather a couple of weeks ago. It’s about 5 miles up from the open water, at the north end of Gouldsboro Bay, with a nice spot for getting out of the way of southeast winds. And blessedly quiet, other than the fellow who lives on his sailboat anchored up there, with lines of Jerry cans along the rail for supporting his many hours of generator use each day. But even that couldn’t take away from the surrounding stillness. It was lovely.

This all feels so long ago, along about now. Presently I’m in Belfast, at the town dock, and have been here for a few days. Suzanne has driven up from Holyoke for visiting and “shore support,” and has just now set off on her way home. The hole in the sail is patched, and fun stuff is done, like replacing the little outdoor thermometer on the tabernacle that was mysteriously broken a couple of weeks ago. And finally we’ve attached the “hailing port” sign, below the name board on the back of the boat, so people can see where the boat is from. Already this has changed the pattern of dockside conversations with folks passing by. Everyone with any connection to Massachusetts specifically says hello!

In between Joy Bay and here, there were five long days of sailing each day, anchoring at night, gradually working west in winds that were generally light and from some version of west themselves. This felt like a lot of work! Then a couple of nights at Holbrook Island, just outside of Castine, and another long day to go about 8 miles upwind to Belfast.

The most exciting thing in these past couple of weeks has been the lovely visiting. Folks came to say hello in Joy Bay, and that was so much fun that on the way out, after the storm that took me there in the first place, I got to stop at their dock and visit some more. Which gave me a chance to hear more stories about the fellow with the generator, and to have the treat of being at a dock for the first time in at least three weeks. I’d been off the boat a while back with the packraft, at the beach on Birch Island, but there’s something special about the feeling of a flat, level surface under one’s feet, wide enough to move in any direction. Thank you Chubba!

And then at Holbrook Island, Joanne, whom I met last year in Belfast, came out with her sailboat to spend the day. This was interesting for even more than the basic visiting, which was lovely in itself. The forecast was for quite strong winds in the afternoon, gusting into the 20s and 30s, and we debated about the best arrangement for visiting. We’d had conversations about rafting the two boats together, hers a very sturdy and substantial Pacific Seacraft 25, and this one 20 feet and a good bit lighter. Knowing that we were in a fairly snug spot immediately behind Holbrook Island, and still being morning before the wind had really gotten in gear, we decided to go ahead and try rafting.

This is a bit against conventional wisdom, which says that rafting – tying two or more boats alongside one another while anchored – is something for calm conditions. But we figured that the wind was not really blowing yet, and we could always change if doing something different started to seem appropriate. So she brought her boat alongside AUKLET, dock lines were attached, and the two boats were doing fine on my rather oversized anchor.

After a bit the breeze did start to come up, and it looked quite doable to keep the boats together, but to put out the Pacific Seacraft’s anchor as well. The theory was that if the two anchors seemed troublesome, then we would raise mine and let both boats ride on the heavier anchor from Joanne’s boat, but I was hoping to not have to do that, since I really liked the spot where mine was set. And of course we could have also simply gone apart and anchored separately. Joanne had her dinghy, so we could then visit on one of the boats. But for the moment we decided to try tying alongside one another.

So Joanne used her engine to move the two boats up, I gathered in the slack on my anchor line, we let the boats swing to starboard, and when it seemed like the second anchor would allow for something between 30 and 45° between the two anchor lines, Joanne dropped her anchor and we each let anchor line back out. With a little tinkering with lengths, pretty soon the two boats, rafted together, were resting on the two anchor lines, shifting the strain back and forth between the anchors as the wind varied, pretty much the same as if there was one boat on two anchors.

It turned out that this worked really well! For an hour or two during the afternoon the wind really blew, with some waves, and spray, and bits of seaweed tossed up to the anchor roller. My little handheld wind gauge registered a gust at 25 knots, there in the harbor, though the steady wind where we were was more like 13 or 14 at that time.

I’m really hoping that this post isn’t scaring anybody – it actually felt very secure, and I was quite positive that AUKLET was having a much nicer time with this big friend than we would have been having on our own. Much less swinging back and forth, and less being bounced around. A couple of days later I mentioned this to Joanne, and she said that she felt the same about her boat.

Eventually the wind let up a bit, and it was time for Joanne to go off. We reversed our process – she hauled in her anchor, with bursts of motor power to help, and I took up the slack in my line. When her anchor was free I let out AUKLET’s line again, so we were back to a nice generous scope, and with the boats still tied together Joanne stowed her anchor and line. When everything was in order she cast off, and was on her way.

So here is my question, for the folks reading this who know about these things: was there something we were missing, as far as understanding risks of what we just did? I’m not understanding why this is something that is “not done.” A partial explanation might be that it’s important to be monitoring what’s going on – Joanne and I did not go below and just think about other things. We were in one or the other cockpit, and then in AUKLET’s cabin, which has the windows all around for keeping an eye on what’s happening, and were paying attention as conditions changed. We did anchor line adjustments, carefully checked that there was no dragging, and noted that the dock lines holding the boats to one another were working fine. And that process was ongoing – it was a little more like visiting while sailing, rather than being anchored and “off duty.” But in that kind of wind, even with the boat anchored singly, a good bit of attention would be going on! And again, the boats seemed to do better than they would have alone, as far as stability and comfort.

So that was a bit of adventure for the week, and comments are invited! I’d be enormously interested to hear both thoughts and experiences on this subject.

Meantime, here I am in Belfast, eating great food and having lots of great conversations. It’ll be hard to leave! The plan is to stay until the wind shifts northerly. It’s a good long trip to the south end of Penobscot Bay, and nothing you want to try without the wind in your favor. Thunderstorms are forecast for tonight, and the beginning of a change tomorrow. But the tide is backwards in the afternoon, when it’s likely to clear up, so I’m looking toward first thing Saturday morning to set out again. Maybe I’ll even get to write another post before it’s time to go!