SAIL.SailMagazine

Collision avoidance is as important to recreational sailors as it is to the commercial mariner. Both groups therefore benefit from the international effort to implement the Automated Identification System (AIS). Initially mandated by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) for vessels over 300 tons, AIS Class A has spawned a second generation of transceivers (Class B) that
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Cruising Grounds Walking down the dock to the Beneteau 393 Splendid Adventure I felt like I was arriving at the scene of a crime. It was late October, and the overcast night sky was pitch black. The air was sweltering hot, absolutely still. To the right I could see the lights of the port of Pensacola, Florida, to the left the lights of the city’s historic Seville Square district. What I was really looking for,
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WCC “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

Baseball legend Yogi Berra gets credit for that advice, but it sort of encapsulated our motivation for the coming cruise.

Our 39-foot steel cutter, Moose, was sailing out through the pass at Mayotte, a French island between Mozambique and Madagascar, bound for Ilha de Moambique, just off the African mainland. After a

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Boatworks There are times when we find exactly what we aren’t looking for, and this was one of them.

I was tired of technology and wanted to write a sailing story about the good old days, when a Windex was high-tech and real navigators dealt with celestial fixes and high-anxiety uncertainty. What better place to look for such things than at the annual Annapolis Classic Wooden Boat Regatta? Ambling

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Navigation

First the good news. Throughout most of the continental United States, calling the Coast Guard on your marine VHF radio now ties you into one of the most modern marine radio networks in use anywhere on Earth. As of November 2010, the 26 Sector Command Centers in the Coast Guard’s Rescue 21 radio network can monitor transmissions along nearly 37,000 miles of coastline.

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