The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a shipboard broadcast system that acts like a transponder, operating in the VHF maritime band. AIS has been around since the 1990s when GPS for civilian purposes reached global coverage. In 2002 the International Maritime Organization mandated that passenger ships and commercial vessels should carry AIS transceivers.
In a nutshell, it’s kind of like air traffic control, but for ships. There’s an electronic chart display that includes a symbol for every ship that’s transmitting within radio range. The symbols show the speed and heading for each ship. By clicking on a ship symbol, you can see a bunch of data about the ship (name, course and speed, classification, call sign, registration number, etc.) More importantly, the AIS can provide maneuvering information, such as the closest point of approach and the time to closest point of approach. With this information you can call any ship over the VHF radio by name, rather than by some imprecise means such as “ship off my port bow”.
Marine Mobile Service Identity (MMSI)
The MMSI is a nine digit number that uniquely identifies a ship. It’s similar to a radio call sign. Overall, MMSIs are regulated by the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, Switzerland. In the US the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) provides MMSI numbers to boats like ours.
We hired a company to get our MMSI number, ship station license and a restricted radio operator’s license. We used Gordon West Radio School in southern California, but there are other companies out there as well. You can apply through the FCC website for all of these. We found it was easier and not that expensive just to hire someone to do it for us.
Vesper Watchmate XB-8000 smartAIS
Most marine electronics companies make AIS units. We decided to buy the Watchmate XB-8000 smartAIS from Vesper Marine because it was less expensive and had really good reviews. The smartAIS is “an active safety system with smart alarm logic that proactively alerts you when you have potential collision situations, it plots your anchor position and alerts you if your anchor drags, it continuously watches for a man overboard and triggers an alarm for quick action.” They have a regular AIS unit that only sends and receives data as well. In the video we discuss the AIS unit and go through our installation including the GPS antenna and VHF splitter.
