No AIS, We are discussing it. Any thoughts.
I have had receive only for years, and that's OK. But then three years ago, at about the halfway point in the trip, I was asked to install at transponder aboard a boat I was delivering to Lake Michigan. I went to Milltechmarine.com, the company that supplied the receiver on my own boat, and found a Camino 108S transponder for around 400 bucks. The owner also wanted a VHF radio with a polar display of the AIS contacts, I think a Standard Horizon GX 2000. In seven hours I installed two new VHF antennas, the Camino, a NMEA 2000 network linking the Camina to the Garmin chartplotter, and the new VHF linked to the Camino via its NMEA 183 input/output.
Two days later, leaving the Ohio River and entering the Mississippi, we were contacted by a tow coming down the Mississippi. He saw us entering the S-turn there on his AIS and asked us to hold up while he came down. Had we not been transmitting AIS, he would not have seen us, and we would have had a hazardous meeting in the S. Another time we were forced by low water in the Illinois to moor alongside the channel rather than well clear. Several down bound tows whose AIS I saw miles upstream on the plotter responded to my anxious VHF calls (made easy direct their bridge via the AIS-VHF DSC connection to their MMSI) that all would be well as they saw my AIS signal on their plotters.
Now the lock tenders on the rivers have AIS and use it to schedule their activities in the short term.
Doing the loop without an AIS transponder would be a self-inflicted wound.
And I don't know how you feel about radar, but the combination of radar and AIS is just plain unbeatable. However, if you can avoid being underway in low-viz conditions, AIS is still just the best tool to have.
