Ive been following Jessica Watsons progress for months and made a special point of going to hear her talk at the Sydney Boat Show in July. She was a slightly built girl but she said she was heartened to discover when she met Jesse Martin that he was hardly any bigger. Jesse Martin as Australians should know is the current holder of the record for youngest solo nonstop and unas
sisted circumnavigation. He was 18 by the time he completed it in 1999 - just 10 years ago -on an identical yacht to Jessica Watsons, an S&S 34. His was called Lionheart (top picture)and thats also the title of his book. The tabloid media have recently been done over by the media campaigns of an American teen, Zac Sunderland, and even more recently that of an English teenager, Mike Perham who both in succession have claimed the record from Jesse, conveniently ignoring the fact that neither sailed nonstop nor unassisted, and they both avoided Cape Horn by sailing through the Panama Canal. What they both did was amazing for sure, but what Jesse did was in another league altogether, particularly as it was done before modern GPS and Satellite communications. Ive just emailed the editor of "Australian Yachting" who repeated the false claim that Jesse's record has been broken. But that is the record that Jessica Watson wants to beat. At the boat show I also met and spoke to Pete Goss a modern yachting legend who sailed solo around the world in the famous Vendee race : he thinks Jess can do it but its a massive challenge and she will become a yachting legend as well if she makes it. However....As everyone probably knows, a couple of weeks ago Jess was lucky to survive a collision with a chinese bulk carrier on her first night at sea on her boat Ellas Pink Lady. She was leaving Queensland for Sydney from where she was planning to start her solo nonstop unassisted circumnavigation. Speculation was rife as to how it could have happened because her Team didnt release any detail of the incident, except to say she was down below when it happened. My view was there had to have been a failure of her AIS (Automatic Identification System)- or else it 
wasnt turned on - or else if it had warned her, she had freaked out and done something crazy like turning towards the ship instead of away from it. This latter possibility seemed the least likely to me, because having seen her she didnt seem the panicky type. I figured she must have been asleep and slept through the warning, but in todays papers theyre reporting a safety instrument (and I presume it must be her AIS) wasnt turned on, and she had dozed off! What an horrendous and terrifying wake up that must have been, waking to the thumping of a ships engines just in time to crash into the hull of the thing which would have been towering above her boat like a massive sheer steel cliff! And then to go bouncing and scraping down the side of it, her rig crashing over the side, powerless to do anything except hope like hell the boat wouldnt go under! She was unbelievably lucky! So thats what happens if you dont have your AIS turned on. On the other hand in this months Australian Cruising Helmsman - which I can never put down till Ive read it from cover to cover - theres an article written by a guy who is convinced he was saved from that same fate by his AIS, which of course WAS turned on. In his encounter with a ship, a collision was avoided because he used the information that is received by the AIS to talk directly to the bridge of the freighter using his VHF radio - he turned to port, they turned to starboard and he avoided being rammed by a few seconds!
wasnt turned on - or else if it had warned her, she had freaked out and done something crazy like turning towards the ship instead of away from it. This latter possibility seemed the least likely to me, because having seen her she didnt seem the panicky type. I figured she must have been asleep and slept through the warning, but in todays papers theyre reporting a safety instrument (and I presume it must be her AIS) wasnt turned on, and she had dozed off! What an horrendous and terrifying wake up that must have been, waking to the thumping of a ships engines just in time to crash into the hull of the thing which would have been towering above her boat like a massive sheer steel cliff! And then to go bouncing and scraping down the side of it, her rig crashing over the side, powerless to do anything except hope like hell the boat wouldnt go under! She was unbelievably lucky! So thats what happens if you dont have your AIS turned on. On the other hand in this months Australian Cruising Helmsman - which I can never put down till Ive read it from cover to cover - theres an article written by a guy who is convinced he was saved from that same fate by his AIS, which of course WAS turned on. In his encounter with a ship, a collision was avoided because he used the information that is received by the AIS to talk directly to the bridge of the freighter using his VHF radio - he turned to port, they turned to starboard and he avoided being rammed by a few seconds!Stories like these convinced me ages ago that an AIS receiver was an essential item of safety gear. All ships over 300 tons are required to have an AIS transponder, an electronic device which causes a VHF radio signal to be emitted from the ship as often as every 3 seconds that contains all sorts of identifying and dynamic information about the ship such as its heading and speed.
With the right sort of software this information can then be displayed on your chartplotter, along with calculations about how likely each vessel is to collide with yours. Parameters that you determine can then trigger alarms to warn you. This warning function used to be the sole domain of radar but for me AIS renders radar less than essential, so for now Ive decided not to get Radar. Next Blog I will reveal how I integrate VHF and HF Radio, GPS, AIS and email in the new nav Station on Sapphire. Its not all up and running yet but should be very soon.
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