I supply the database with a range of master data encompassing geographical elements such as ports and industrial zones which provide a reliable benchmark for the interpretation of AIS messages sent by vessels in the traffic area.
Are you spending more time at home than you would like to? Make the best out of it. We felt like returning something to our users. Therefore we dropped the daily time limits for Open Users. Open Users (free accounts) can use the FleetMon Explorer beyond 15 minutes per day. Feel free to track your favourite vessels all day every day until 1 June – no costs involved.
Global Coronavirus led to minimizing public life and impacts our habits as well. Many people are not only forced to stay in quarantine at home but also voluntarily hide themselves away with their families. We show you three activities on FleetMon made for real ship lovers. To all the pilots, navigators, seafarers, long-term crew members, and ship spotters: Now is the perfect time to become involved in our community-based platform to forget the Coronavirus madness for a while.
In December 2019 FleetMon was invited to visit the Maritime Simulation Center Warnemünde (MSCW). The Maritime Simulation Center Warnemünde (MSCW) is part of the Department of Maritime Studies and a mandatory part of every maritime seagoing personnel education offered at the University of Applied Sciences, Technology, Business and Design in Wismar (Hochschule Wismar). Being located in Rostock Warnemünde, the center is not too far from the FleetMon headquarter. It is part of our FleetMon DNA to widen our horizons and strive for maritime expertise. For that reason, we like to organize team events and excursions on a regular basis. Besides that, it is always a lot of fun to spend some time with colleagues outside of the office.
The Maritime Simulation Centre is the only one worldwide combining the simulation of nautical and technical vessel operations and a shore-based vessel traffic services simulator system. Four different simulator systems are to be found inside the center: A Ship Handling Simulator, a Ship Engine Simulator, a Vessel Traffic Services Simulator, and a Ship Safety & Security Trainer. The MSCW was built for education and training of the maritime seagoing personnel (e.g. nautical officers) and provides an excellent basis for research and development. We were especially interested to visit the Ship Handling Simulator and the Vessel Traffic Services Simulator.
Only one moment to take the perfect shot. Ship spotting is a hobby made for true vessel enthusiasts, crew members, people working in the nautical field and other maritime fans. Equipped with warm socks, raincoat, field glasses and most important – a camera – ship spotters head out to take pictures of all kinds of vessels: passenger ships, tankers, bulkers, cargo vessels – Nothing is safe from their focused lenses. German Ship spotters can be found at the major ports, terminals and nearby bridges of Hamburg, Cuxhaven, Kiel, and Warnemünde.
Ship spotters upload their pictures to vessel tracking platforms like FleetMon.com to enlarge their personal photo galleries. FleetMon is based in Rostock/ Germany and celebrates its 10th anniversary in summer 2020. During the last decade, far more than 600.000 vessel pictures have been added to our vessel image database. Providing users with high-quality pictures of over 70.000 different vessels truly adds value to our vessel database.
Sanlucar de Barrameda, the seaside resort and fishing port (Bonanza) at the mouth of the Rio Guadalquivir in SW Andalusia, is a unique location for ship spotters. Lying on the beautiful sandy beach or swimming in the 30° warm water, you see all kinds of vessels sailing by – numerous fishing cutters chugging into the nearby harbour and cruise liners, container ships or tankers sailing up river to Seville or returning to the Atlantic. The Rio Guadalquivir is navigable as far as Seville, around 60 miles further north, and the capital of Andalusia is not only a popular destination for cruise liners but also a regular port of call for various cargo ships.
On August 10, for example, the 30,000-ton P&O cruise liner ADONIA sailed past the Sanlucar sunbathers heading from Seville into the Atlantic en route to her next port of call, Gibraltar.
A cargo ship regularly seen off the beaches of Sanlucar is the OPDR LISBOA, a 698-TEU container ship operated by the Oldenburg-Portugiesische Dampfschiffs-Reederei (OPDR) that runs a shuttle service between Las Palmas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Casablanca and Seville. When seen sailing past the Sanlucar swimmers on August 20, the LISBOA had left Seville the day before and was heading for Las Palmas where it docked on August 22.
On six evenings at low tide in August the Sanlucar beach also stages professional horse races that attract crowds of up to 30,000 – an unparalleled sporting event held since 1845. It also offers the horseracing spectators the uniquely remarkable sight of thousands of horsepower sailing past ten horsepower on the sand.
A few weeks ago we ran a survey to get feedback on the picture of the month/week tool. Many thanks to everybody who filled out the form and shared their experiences with us. More then 93% of the participants like this new tool and some made improvement proposals that we considered. We will use this feedback to improve the tool in the coming releases.
We want to thank everybody for all their support, their fantastic pictures and lovely words. Every day we have the chance to see fantastic, high quality pictures and that is why we we have updated the image guidelines to give you more chances to publish creative and high quality pictures.
Our experience with the community has been very courteous, fair and friendly. We continue to solve all issues together and strive to be fair and polite. If there is a problem or a question, please feel free to contact the support team by email or chat window. If anyone is interested in getting involved in keeping the image database quality high, we would be happy to welcome volunteers to support our image moderation team.
If you have further questions or suggestions just contact us.
We are permanently expanding our Terrestrial AIS Network!
To keep you updated, here’s an overview of this Month new AIS stations:
We are permanently expanding our Terrestrial AIS Network!
To keep you updated, here’s an overview of this Month new AIS stations:
We are permanently expanding our Terrestrial AIS Network!
To keep you updated, here’s an overview of this Month new AIS stations:
