Passage to Sri Lanka
29 March 2014 | Indian Ocean
As we were approaching the southern coast of Sri Lanka, the freighter traffic got more congested. This part of the Indian Ocean is the main though-fare for ships going to the Red Sea from Asia.
We are the black boat in the middle on the red line and the other triangles are the freighters.
They look close, but most of them are 5-10 miles away, and when we look around us, we don't see any of them. If it weren't for our AIS ( Automatic Identification System - an automatic tracking system used on ships for identifying and locating vessels) we wouldn't even know that they were there. When they pass by us, like the one that crossed our bow, they do it at about a 2 miles distance. Some come closer but never less than a mile away.
We can put our cursor on the triangle of their boat and we get information like boat name, speed, closest point of approach to us and when they will be at that closest point.
At one point, there was a freighter coming up behind us - he was still 5 miles off - so I called him by name to say that we are a small vessel, under sail moving at a mere 5 knots (these freighters move between 12-22 knots) and could he see us on his AIS system? He said that he did see us and when he got closer, he would pass us on our starboard side by 2 miles - which he did.
AIS is a must have on any boat. It rates in the top 5 systems that we pay homage to all the time.