AIS to follow the 'Atlantic Fleet' ?

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pcatterall

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I am following a friend on a yacht in that area. They are using a tracker system called Yellowbrick, seems a good system.
I don't know how many yachts doing the crossing will have similar systems or AIS transmitters. is there some sort of site where you can just 'dip into' to see various yachts and their progress?

Are these trackers of any value as a basic sort of safety device? a position report every 6 hours would at least reassure your nearest and dearest but I suppose the down side is your lies about your whereabouts will soon be discovered!!
 
pcatterall said:
I am following a friend on a yacht in that area. They are using a tracker system called Yellowbrick, seems a good system.
I don't know how many yachts doing the crossing will have similar systems or AIS transmitters. is there some sort of site where you can just 'dip into' to see various yachts and their progress?
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If the event arranged the yellow bricks then there is a event yellow brick page. Happens with things like the Fastnet. Finding the page may be the hard bit in my experience!
Are these trackers of any value as a basic sort of safety device? a position report every 6 hours would at least reassure your nearest and dearest but I suppose the down side is your lies about your whereabouts will soon be discovered!!
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They can update more often 15mins I think. But you pay for data so if its not event funded you compromise! There is a distress function on it like an EPIRB/PLB which will ping a message via INMART-SAT to Yellow Brick and they will forward as appropriate either to emergency services or to a shore point of contact.

Standard AIS wont reach that far into the atlantic. There are commercial shipping trackers (if you have a multi-million pound tanker in the atlantic you may want to know where it is!!). Think they use INMAR-SAT.
 
http://www.marinetraffic.com lets you spy on AIS transmissions.

AIS is carried on VHF frequencies, so its range is about the same as your radio (remembering that ships and shore receivers may have much higher aerials than you). So no good for tracking yachts across oceans.

Pete
 
Go onto the Yellowbrick site the tracking will be there. It's not AIS, it would be out of range, Yellowbrick is satellite tracking. Only moderately useful as a safety system the absence of a position report does not indicate distress. It will send an alert message on demand, a bit like an EPIRB but not directly to the emergency services.

http://www.yellowbrick-tracking.com/?page_id=408
 
As other have said - nothing to do with AIS. It's satellite tracking. Yelllowbrick sounds good, but I would recommend a look at Delorme InReach http://www.inreachdelorme.com

It interfaces with your mobile phone and you can sit at the chart table and fire off texts about the fabulous/miserable time you're having. Dead easy, and with tracking, and a map display for the folks back home. Works through Iridium so more reliable at high latitudes.

There are lots of these around now. SPOT have one, I think.
 
A friend of mine took a Yellowbrick on his boat when he sailed to the Carribbean. He got his own website as part of the package so friends and relatives could track his progress - see http://my.yb.tl/sailinginlimbo/

You can set the Yellowbrick to report your position at pre-determined time intervals. The battery life of the device depends in part on the frequency of transmissions, so he chose to report about 3 times a day to conserve power.

The Yellowbrick allows emails to be sent and received (by interfacing with a mobile phone) so provides an economical alternative to a sat phone for keeping in touch - albeit with much more limited functionality (you can't actually speak to anyone!). It has its own email address and every character received or sent is chargeable. I used this to send daily weather forecasts for the area that my friend was sailing in - something that I gather he found extremely useful as he had no other source of forecasts.

The Yellowbrick proved reliable but did fail to report a position for the best part of a day on one occasion. Why this happened remains a mystery, but it illustrated the downside of all this technology by causing worry when, in the absence of the Yellowbrick, there would have been none! It's important to have an agreed plan in the event of a failure to report, otherwise the person monitoring progress at home is left not knowing what to do for the best.

All in all, a very useful bit of kit in my opinion. If I ever get around to making the "trip of a lifetime", I'll certainly fit one.
 
Actually I understand there are satellites that can pick up AIS now.
But probably not relevant in this case!
 
prv said:
AIS is carried on VHF frequencies, so its range is about the same as your radio (remembering that ships and shore receivers may have much higher aerials than you). So no good for tracking yachts across oceans.
Click to expand...

There are satelites capable of tracking AIS transmissions.
This information obtained from satelites is not generally freely available to the general public.
Either you have to pay for it, or the information is reserved for government/official use.

At the moment, I'm sitting at work tracking the progress of a friend in the ARC (AIS info - live feed).
Software provided by the US DoT.
 
Yellow brick that I have seen around here is used by race/rally organisers. EG the Fremantle to Bali biannual rally and race. The organisers provide the yellow briock which clamps onto the stern rail and the boat provides 12v supply. The data from the yellow brick is shown on the organiser's web page. Each boat is shown with position speed and direction of travel. it is good to be able to keep track of friends. I don't know the update rate but thought it was quite frequent. The yellow brick contains a GPS receiver and transmitter to a satelite. Thence back to the internet. of course I may be wrong in some details but that is how it seems to me. good luck olewill
 
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