In the age of ultrafast communication and GPS, it is hard to imagine that sailors once relied on the sky (i.e. constellations) to navigate their vessels in the high seas. However, not every sailor was a Viking, and this led to high chances of the ship landing somewhere it is not supposed to be (read: Christopher Columbus).
Fast forward to the 21st century, and we can do nothing but look back in awe at all the challenges sailors used to face back in the days. Since the 1990s, navigation in itself and shipping at large have undergone sea changes, thanks to the rampant evolution in AIS tech.
Now, humans have the rightful luxury of tracking their fleets on the seven seas with the help of a single click in real-time.
What was initially developed to function as a simple collision avoidance tool has now spiraled to form the heartbeat of global ship navigation? Yes, it is the Automatic Identification System (AIS) that we are talking about.
Currently, over half a million vessels actively use AIS for transmitting vessel data (mainly their location), which then gets collected by a receiver network deployed across the globe. FleetMon alone has a humongous database of over half a million vessels with users across 164 countries using FleetMon.com to track vessel movement.
Gone are the days when AIS used to be a tool for accident prevention. It is now a proven source of information for a wide variety of individuals ranging from maritime businesses that leverage its data to predict their growth, to researchers and analysts monitoring the supply chain.
As such, it is ever more important to know about AIS, at least the basics of it. The blog has been engineered for the same purpose, covering the 10 most important points about AIS and how you could benefit from it.
December 12, 2016 was a memorable milestone in the history of America’s clean renewable energy industry. It was the day when Deepwater Wind’s Block Island Wind Farm became the first offshore wind farm to deliver energy to the American power grid. Located off the shore of Rhode Island, the five offshore wind turbines that make up Block Island Wind Farm are now delivering electricity to the New England grid on a regular basis. The power produced by this pioneering wind farm is transmitted to the grid via a new sea-to-shore submarine cable system. This historic project was the result of two years of work involving more than 300 workers in the development, construction and commissioning of Block Island Wind Farm. Such a project also generates a great many vessel movements, which is where FleetMon came in. Read more…
Today, the FleetMon Support Team was asked to investigate the build date of the vessel MARITIME CENTURY. The information was easy enough to find, so we spent a few additional minutes and checked a bit further. Here is what we discovered on the fly:
The MARITIME CENTURY, a Panamanian-flagged bulk carrier, currently crosses the North Atlantic Ocean and is due to arrive at Amsterdam Port the 25th of November at 5 pm UTC. A quick glance into the vessel’s voyage log as captured via satellites revealed that the vessel’s last port of call was Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where it arrived after sailing the open sea for 2 weeks. The scheduled time of arrival was fully met and after a few hours in port the MARITIME CENTURY proceeded further north.
The online port call history of the ship, just one click away from the detailed vessel track and dating back till October 2011, gave us immediate insight into the intercontinental voyages of the ship. It mainly operated between Australian and East-Asian ports over the last 2 years. On its current voyage it now interlinks the port of Paranagua in Brazil, where it departured the 31st of October, with Europe. Read more…
FleetMon Explorer now gives you quick and detailed information on current weather and sea state conditions anywhere on the globe. We introduced new information layers on
wind speed and direction,
swell wave height and direction,
direction and speed of oceanic currents
which can all be displayed together with live real-time ship movements, on top of satellite maps or nautical charts.
Current wind situation on the Northern Atlantic
MEDI VITORIA passing Azores with destination Philadelphia
Knowledge of sea state and currents help you in voyage planning, alternative routing and fuel saving. The new functions enable you to analyze a vessel’s behavior with consideration to the conditions it is in.
Enhance your situation awareness with the new maps. Be informed about areas with heavy seas. Keep an eye on hurricances, typhoons and cyclones, their impact and development, right together with your fleet’s positions, in one software tool.
Cyclone “Evan” is leaving Fiji Islands…
…and leaves heavy seas southeastern of the island
Ocean currents in the Southern Pacific are heavily influenced by the cyclone, too.
MINERAL NEW YORK steaming against the Agulhas Current
The wind and sea state service is available for subscribers to the FleetMon.com Pro and Unlimited plans (Pro: wind only). For further details, see our Plans & Prices page. Use the buttons “wind”, “wave” and “currents” within FleetMon Explorer to toggle the respective map layers.
We made the display of the vessel tracks even more precise and introduced a new modus for the last track of a selected vessel. If the vessel is on its journey for more then 24h FM Explorer will recall the traveled route to the last port visited. The new feature will give you more insight with just a single click.
detailed display of vessels track in FM Explorer
category colors in vessels name labels in FM Explorer
Colorful labels with the name of every vessel names are making your monitoring live easier :-) Read more…
Fleetmon for the iphone got three minor updates over the last weeks, thanks to our busy development team. Newest feature is the Digital-Seas live AIS coverage map as an overlay inside the spotter. Now you can enjoy the equal tracking experience inside Fleetmon :web or :mobile. Here’s the list of our 1.5 additions:
1.5.3 ✔ new: Coverage layer added to Fleetmon’s spotter map (same view like Fleetmon :web) ✔ new: Improved vessel search (now interactive search, like web site search) ✔ Fixed some minor glitches and issues
1.5.2 ✔ new: flicker free update of vessel positions on map ✔ new: swipe gesture to delete vessels from “My Fleet” ✔ new: status feedback in message bar ✔ Fixed bugs to improve stability
1.5.1 – for users having difficulties to input their login data, we adjusted the interface (my Fleet functions) – fixing a memory leak ✔ new map switch (moved from preferences into map)
