I am happy to announce you that free vessel tracker VesselFinder.com is online again:rolleyes:. The site has disapeared for about 1 month. The precious information in this site is that you can see where (and when) the ship has been seen last time even if she is out of coverage at the moment! The access is free, only registration is required.
Peter
I find that http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/ is a better site. Has a gallery of most the vessels too!
Not having any luck tracking an offshore tug heading from Corpus to Port of Tampa - perhaps tugs don’t show up on this site? Didn’t find it in the gallery either. Is there another site that would likely have this info? Thanks!
Usually AIS information can only be received up to a distance of about 15 - 20 miles. So a boat crossing the GOM (that far south) would be out of range of a land based vhf receiver.
Thanks, Shoot, for being patient with a serious newbie who is v. much in a learning phase and has a long way to go! Will check the site again as the vessel nears our coastline. Since the particular tug in question doesn’t appear on the site’s name roster, would it show up even if it was within range?
[QUOTE=spookster;11114]Thanks, Shoot, for being patient with a serious newbie who is v. much in a learning phase and has a long way to go! Will check the site again as the vessel nears our coastline. Since the particular tug in question doesn’t appear on the site’s name roster, would it show up even if it was within range?[/QUOTE]
No worries, I’m a newbie too. I like to use www.vesseltracker.com for basic locating. Anything with an IMO number that is broadcasting and within range of of a receiver is posted. With a free account, you can save your particular vessels of interest, but locations are delayed by two hours. They seem to have better GOM coverage and vessels are searchable by name or IMO. I enjoy looking at the European ports and drooling. Wouldn’t it be nice if the U.S. practiced more short-sea shipping?
-Done rambling
There’s also sailwx.info - it’s not based on AIS, but off of weather reports that are sent in. Pretty much any ship that sends in a weather report is plotted - you can search by callsign or ship name.
Marinetraffic.com is a great site, however, for some reason while it seems to show every vessel on the Mississippi heading to and from N.O., I’m having no luck finding this particular tug boat. Our son called this morning from the vessel confirming their general location so I suspect the reason may be that it is an older ship and may not have AIS capability? Is that logical? Other tugs in the same company are always findable. Appreciate any thoughts.
Vessel tracking sites ? Nice tech …
But what about security ?
Do we really want pirates … or terrorists lay back and pick
their preys -potential high profile targets like gascarriers or
cruiseships- feed them that information ? ? ?
We don’t spread that kind of data for civil aviation,
why should we allow it ifor shipping ?
Even if these pirate lost their ability to track ships online there are other just as easy ways for them to find out. There own AIS receiver (not expensive compared to their payoffs) and the many bribes they already use to get cargo manifests.
We added a Marine Traffic portal to our tools page. Take a look:
Free Online Vessel Tracking
Hello to all!
I just found this post and I’m realy interested in how did you manage to add a Marine Traffic page to your tools page. I wanted the same for my project www.marinarionline.ro which is dedicated to Romanian seamen.
So far I have no response from them…
Can you please help me???
Waiting your reply.
Catalin NOVAC
We just launched a new site too and it is VERY quick!
The marinetraffic.com site can only show vessels that are within range of someone that transmits their own AIS data through the internet as a member of the site. I believe they also have some base stations onshore. So if a vessel offshore that is set up to send their AIS data over the internet and has your vessel in range it will show on the site.
Lee and I have just updated our site - It’s free to use, no ads and playback too
We’re supplying receivers and are looking for AIS feeds too.
Other ship tracking sites are available 
Looking forward to some upgrades on these types of sites. On IPhone only one size screen without downloading app with marine traffic. Believe it works like cap’n ETC says . Im at home and checking out the boost before crew change and can watch it pull into the rig from standby. 2 minute updates. Boat works GC so that’s about 100 miles from shore.
I paid for one of the iPhone apps only to discover there is no feed (apparently for any of the sites) for Houston/Galveston/Texas City. Some of the companies apparently will provide equipment and installation if someone gives them access to a good site and broadband connection. No coverage of the Corpus are either, that I van find.
Thanks a lot,you guys.The post is helpful to me!!!
VesselFinder (www.vesselfinder.com) has a new interface with interactive map similar to MarineTraffic. The features are very simple but if you need just to find “where is my ship” it is quicker.
for me the best AIS based is marinetraffic.com and the boloomo shipping…just try im using it for a long time…