That pretty well sums up my attitude. Listen to the VHF but don't speak. I assume the traffic centres have enough to deal with without worrying about people in toy boats.
Certain ports could not seem to care less, but some do.
If you look at a chart (not necessarliy a chart plotter, but certainly shown on the dutch charts & older Stanfords ones) you will see that there is an alloted crossing point from Breskens to Flushing that keeps one clear of the ferry, except for the last bit before the harbour so that call should not have been needed if you had complied with the rules
one of the best reasons for a remote secondary station for the VHF in the cockpit
Perhaps I should have made it clearer that I meant when passing the entrance. I would normally call up any harbour that I was visiting where Reeds says one should call. The only time I recall failing to do this was Scheveningen, where the calling channel was some strange one we don't have, though that may have been the inner harbour.
I know I know. Unfortunately I had shaft issues so chose to cross the traffic at 90 degrees with Vlissingen Buitenhaven as the arrival point rather than waste half my power and double my vulnerability crossing a 3 knot tide - meeting a ferry or two was inevitable.
+1 about AIS. When berthed at James Watt Dock in Greenock, it was very useful to be able to see ships in the shipping channel, even though they were hidden by the high walls of the dock. However, it did backfire once - we saw an AIS target in line with the entrance, but pointing away from us. As it was pointing away, we headed for the entrance quite happily - until I realized that the target was a double ended ferry and it was actually heading towards us - someone had forgotten to tell the AIS which end was bow and which was stern! No harm done; I had plenty of room to circle round while he passed through the entrance, but I leaned not to entirely trust AIS!
No course vectors displayed? Those are the most useful part of AIS!
Not on my Raymarine C80 chart-plotter. The target is displayed as an arrowhead with the heading in the direction shown in the transmitted data, but of course, if the transmitted heading is 180° wrong because it's a double-ended vessel and they haven't flipped the switch to indicate which end is going first, the arrow points the wrong way!
The Raymarine C80 displays the vessel as an arrowhead pointing in the direction given in the transmitted data. But the vessel was a double-ender, and they hadn't flipped the switch (or whatever) to indicate which end was at the front, so the bearing was 180° wrong!
One certainly cannot trust AIS fully
On my e7 the vectors display the direction in relation to my boat and not the chart reference, which sometimes has to be born in mind since the display includes the chart.