We’re buying a new boat !!

[Hurricane]

Hurricane, thanks for mentioning Boatbeacon - I'd not heard of that app and looks a fantastic alternative to a transponder plus gives family/friends the ability to track.

Yep
The only problem is people "getting their heads round" how it works.
To recap, Boatbeacon uses the location services of your mobile phone and "streams" your position, heading and speed etc onto the internet - to Vesselfinder and Marinetraffic.
You can't and shouldn't expect your boat to then appear on a plotter near you.
But if, as you say, your family want to know where you (actually, your phone) are, then they would browse to Vesselfinder and/or Marintraffic to track you.

In Sant Carles, we have our marina forum and I've set up our own AIS fleet for boats in our marina.
I have a page on our forum which shows where all our boats are.
That page uses Vesselfinder and only shows the boats in OUR fleet.
Vesselfinder includes boats received from actual AIS transmissions AND those from Boatbeacon.
You can set your own fleet in Vesselfinder and just include your own boat.
If you need lots of boats in your "Vesselfinder" fleet, you will need to pay Vesselfinder for a subscription.
At SCM, we contribute to Vesselfinder by streaming local to Sant Carles) AIS transmissions - using a cheap Raspberry Pi.
For streaming that data, Vesselfinder give us a Professional membership.

Here are some photos - from the SCMCHAT (our forum) AIS page
This was two of us approaching Ibiza a couple of weeks ago - image was taken from a friend based on the mainland in Sant Carles at that time .



I've just looked back through my WhatsApp images and found a screenshot that I took when my friend was joining us in Ibiza.
Here is that screenshot.



As you can see, this kind of information can be really useful
At that time, Ocean Tigress (the boat being tracked) was close to a small group of islands called The Columbrettes.
I think there is a mobile phone mast on those islands because we always seem to get good mobile phone coverage when we are close to them.

Anyway, if you are planning on using Boatbeacon for family members to track you, it would be worth looking at the "fleet" options within Vesselfinder.
Your family would then be able to track you without searching through thousands of other AIS ships/boats.

Sorry - again, Henry for the thread drift but I think this stuff is quite useful

 

[Richard.C]

Nebo, is another option if it is just for family members to track your progress on a journey where you maintain cell phone access.

 

[timbad]

Plus 1 for boat beacon

 

[Alicatt]

Not used it in a while but we used to use Wikiloc for tracking friends and family when out and about, a friend in the US uses it when out in the wilds on his motorbike and another uses it to keep track of his flights in his homebuilt aircraft. It's not boat specific though.

 

[TonyR123]

.
what are the chances this f55 is yours henry (unlikely as I am guessing yours isnt so far along in production)? Very interesting factory tour!