We live on the water, but we don’t really live in it. Sure, we go swimming and snorkeling. We go to the beach. The older kids surf, Tanya kayaks, and Sam likes to fish. We sail from place to place.

But we rarely take the boat out just for fun. We rarely go fishing. The kids don’t really like to surf. Snorkeling and swimming trips are usually brief, and then only when you can see the bottom in 20 feet. Tanya and I are certified to dive, but haven’t done a recreational dive in 20 years.

It isn’t because we don’t have the gear. Oh, we have the gear. Six fishing poles, three spears, hand lines, and tackle out the wazoo. A hookah with five hoses. Two air tanks. Fins, and masks, and snorkels to outfit a platoon. Two dinghies, two kayaks, two surf boards, and two body boards.

The only reasonable conclusion is that we don’t like the water. Which isn’t true. I’m not really sure what the problem is. We like the water, but we lack a passion for it.

We’ve seen the passion in others. Roy, Pierre, and Camden are boat kids we’ve met (three different boats) with fishing in their blood. With them, it was all-fishing all-the-time. Sam has that gene too, but it needs to be cultivated. Eli doesn’t care about fish, but he’s a natural hunter and could probably feed the whole family. I want that for both of them, but I don’t know how to give it to them.

Ken and Amy live here in Marathon with their three kids. The whole family is absolutely crazy about the water. Okay, Ken is the crazy one and everyone else is happy to go along. He is constantly fishing, spearfishing, crabbing, or lobstering. He spends far more time on the water than I do, and I live there. He has the passion I need.

So while we’re in Marathon for the next couple months, we’re making a concerted effort to become water lovers. And Ken is my mentor. Seven-hour spearfishing marathon? I’m in. All-night bullynetting for lobster? You bet. Offshore trip for Mahi? I’ll buy the fuel. Eli and Sam are my companions in this quest.

There is hope for us yet. Eli and Aaron are getting certified to dive. They’ve done three days of pool work, but then came down with head colds, so have yet to complete the open water part.

Sam is fishing almost constantly here. We have a little aquarium right off the back of our boat with snappers, grunts, parrot fish, lobster, and even a resident moray eel. Sam will sit out there for hours. Tanya buys him bait at the grocery store.

We’ve had the boat out twice in the three weeks that we’ve been here, which is probably a record, especially since it means turning off the air conditioning and backing out a narrow channel. We even braved the craziness and took the boat out on the 4th of July, a first for us.

Summer in Marathon is the right time and place for this kind of transformation. The weather is calm, the water is warm, and the local culture is all about the salt life. It’s not just a bumper sticker down here.

Why is leaving so hard? We have asked this question countless times over the years, and the blog archives are probably littered with posts about departure angst. We like traveling, we don’t mind island hopping, or even making long passages, but for some reason picking a time for departure and actually untying the lines is very stressful. It could be that every time we try to leave, something goes wrong.

Once, one of our kids swallowed a sprite-can pop-top right before a Bahamas trip, delaying us for a few days while we waited to see if we were going to have to spend some time at Miami Children’s Hospital (we didn’t). Another time, we anchored out ahead of a Thanksgiving buddy-boat trip with Jay’s folks and we lost half a battery bank, and a generator breaker switch got turned off accidentally and the remaining batteries weren’t charging. After Rachel was born, we tried to leave the dock ahead of a tropical storm and missed the window to head south, so we pulled into a mangrove-lined bay we knew of and weathered five days of 30-40 knot winds before we could actually leave. One year, we left for the Bahamas, got out the inlet and the water was so rough that we decided to turn around and wait another week at anchor until we felt up to trying again.

And here we are, tied to the dock in Ft. Pierce, with other places and other people beckoning, and we just can’t seem to untie the boat. We’ve had at least three farewell dinners and someone sent us a good-bye key lime pie. At the beginning of last week, we had all but decided to hop over the Gulf Stream when we checked the kids’ passports and realized that four of them had expired in April. Oops! Guess we won’t be traveling internationally for 4-6 weeks!

Some people make it seem so effortless—they circle a date on the calendar, fuel and provision the boat, rise before the sun and untie the lines, sailing away without fanfare or failure. For us, all the stars must be exactly aligned: no sick kids, no storms, no emergencies with Jay’s work, no unfinished boat projects, and no extended-family crises. We want wind from the right direction, calm seas, and a traveling moon. I guess it’s a miracle we ever leave the dock at all.

But then it happens: one morning, after months of discussion and planning, after we’ve all but given up trying to leave, we wake up, feel the freshening breeze, have our coffee while we take a look at the charts, grab a few last-minute items at the store, and start the engines. Without a soul to wave to, we pull in our power cord and dock lines and motor slowly away. Somehow we know when the right moment comes, but rarely do we know beforehand. If you ask me when we are leaving, or where we are going, I respond, “Who knows?” I am not merely being mysterious—I really have no idea. There is a Plan, but it isn’t ours and we’re not informed until we’re well on our way. This kind of spontaneity makes scheduling a bit tricky, but it keeps us humble and provides us with many pleasant surprises.

We’ve owned Take Two for seven years now. She’s been our home for nearly six. That’s longer than I’ve ever lived in any house, anywhere. It’s long enough for the initial romance to have worn off, but not so long that I am tired of living aboard. Living on a boat seems to possess the perfect balance of familiar and foreign. Sometimes, our life is exciting—we meet new people, we go to new places, have adventures. And sometimes it’s humdrum, especially if we’re tied to a dock because of boat projects or Jay’s work. Somehow, over the course of several years, both the extraordinary and the mundane have woven themselves into some kind of “normal” for us.

One reason I think we have been successful living aboard is that we try to balance working on the boat with enjoying the boat. The to-do list for a boat is not linear, but circular. As soon as you’ve fixed one thing, another needs fixing, and if, by some miracle, everything has been fixed once, then it’ll be time to go back and fix it all again. If you accept that you’ll never be finished, it frees you up to just pick a stopping spot and leave for a while. This would not be possible if the boat represented a sabbatical from our normal lives, but since it is our normal life, we’ve found a way to compromise. We use the boat, bring it back to a dock to work on it, and then make some more money so we can use the boat again.

People frequently ask our kids “what is it like to live on a boat?” They think they’ll receive some amazing response about adventure and fun and an unconventional life, but our kids either look at them blankly or, worse, tell them how they always get seasick. For children, “normal” is defined by the adults in their lives. Rachel, who has never lived in a house, thinks a bathtub is exotic, and looks forward to going to her Mimi’s house because she can take a bubble bath there. For boat kids, taking the dinghy to get groceries is normal, using laundromats is normal, going to the beach for recess is normal, seeing dolphins and manatees in the “yard” is normal. Without the perspective of time and experience, they won’t be able to appreciate their upbringing on the water.

For Jay and me, leaving suburbia was anything but normal—some people said we were “crazy” and by that, a few even meant “foolish.” But the way our culture defines “normal” was not attractive to us: we didn’t like the norms of indebtedness, rush-hour traffic, school schedules, mowing the lawn, and saving for retirement. If that’s your cup of tea, have at it, but we longed for something else. I am always being asked, “How do you do it?” It’s a question that has many possible answers, but the most boring one is that I get up in the morning and put my pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else. It’s normal for me to homeschool five children on a boat. I appreciate that it’s an interesting way to live, and that we’re different even from a lot of the families we meet cruising, but, honestly, the excitement has worn off and we’ve settled into the business of raising our family, working, fixing our boat, and going exploring. That said, I love our life and love being able to change the scenery without packing any boxes and renting a U-Haul.

I tend not to write much when there are boat projects underway. I don’t think many people are interested in reading about them, and I’m too mentally occupied to write about anything else.

Tanya says I need to write more, so I figured I’d at least give a high-level run-down of what has been changed on the boat recently. I could write a big post about each of these, but I probably won’t. So use the Contact page if you want more details.

Air Conditioning – This project was actually finished last spring, but I don’t think we ever talked about it. We pulled out the old split-gas system and put in 5 separate combo units. We have a big pump in each stern and use relay boxes for the units to demand water. The pumps feed manifolds that have valves to isolate each unit, and dedicated ports so I can circulate acid occasionally. The return manifolds have eductors which use the Venturi principle to suck the condensate water out of the pans. I put little float switches in the pans to sound alarms in case they back up. The units themselves are installed in semi-airtight boxes so we can filter the air. It’s amazing how much dust we generate.

Instruments – We took a phased approach that was ongoing for a long time, but is now complete. I chose Simrad/B&G because I was excited about what they were doing with FMCW radar, the sailing features in the Zeus chartplotters, and their reputation for autopilots. We also replaced the instrument displays, the VHF, and added an AIS transceiver. Everything is native NMEA2000. The indoor and outdoor chartplotters are networked together, so they can share charts, waypoints, and the radar; and networked with the rest of the boat, so we can view and control them from Wi-Fi tablets. I expect to rest better when I can open one eye and see a mirrored chartplotter display from my bunk.

Mainsheets – We used to have a 14-foot mainsheet traveler across the back of our cockpit. I originally viewed that traveler as a mark of awesomeness, but living with it was another matter entirely. It had a continuous-line 6:1 adjustment that was hard to use, the cars were noisy when the wind was light, and I’d been worried for years that the thing was going to take a kid’s fingers off. We continued to use it, but usually with the addition of a preventer to “triangulate” the boom. The final straw came when we began to reimagine the cockpit for better seating and enclosure. I removed the traveler and replaced it with dual 3:1 mainsheets. I decided to have dedicated winches available for both the main and spinnaker sheets, which necessitated a little winch rearrangement am still in the midst of.

Hardtop – We built a hardtop to go over the cockpit. The structure we built a few years ago was designed to support a hardtop, but initially we only covered it with fabric laced to the edges. Even with fabric, this ranks as one of the best all-time improvements we’ve made to the boat. The new full-solid top radiates less heat, looks better, allows rain catchment, and provides for attachment of better curtains to help keep the elements out of the cockpit. But it was A LOT of work.

Bowsprit – I’m planning to update our sail inventory with something in the asymmetrical off-wind category. While it may not be strictly necessary, I decided I wanted a bowsprit. For $100 in materials, $100 for welding, and $100 for painting, it was surprisingly easy and inexpensive. I still have to install the padeyes in the bows for the guys that hold it down.

Rigging – The big ticket item has been the mast re-rig. This was just maintenance, but very important. You want to fix it before it fails. We replaced the standing rigging that holds the mast up, the electrical wiring, antennas and conductors, stripped all the hardware off of the mast and repainted it. The only real changes we made were trimming down the step for the old radar, and adding a small crane to the front of the masthead to support a spinnaker furler. We also replaced the plastic sheaves in the boom for some with ball bearings to try and eliminate an annoying squeak when we’re under sail.

There have been a lot of other little things done, but those are the big ones I can think of off-hand. Of course, we have more on the drawing board.

New Sail – The code zero/gennaker/screecher/spinnaker has already been mentioned. This will be on a furler on the end of the bowsprit. We currently have a symmetrical spinnaker in a sock. I expect the new sail to eminently more useful and usable, which should translate into more sailing.

Stern Protection – Our sterns are constantly being bashed by docks and dinghies, and I often envy the protective cages you sometimes see on the back of workboats. I’ve got a design and very reasonable quote from the local welder to add some reinforced tubing around our sterns. It would also provide handholds for people in the water and attachment points for fenders and towables. I love the idea, but I’m always hesitant to make a major change.

New Dinghy – Our 12-foot RIB and 25hp 2-stroke have seen some hard years. Sam and I took them fishing this past week. The motor was initially very grumpy (but got over it) and a fish managed to puncture the dinghy in two places. I applied my first patches ever, and they seem to be holding. But there’s a very “tired” feeling coming from them. I also think we should go up a size. A 13-footer with a 40 sounds about right.

New Watermaker – We’ve outgrown our Spectra. Spectras are great machines, but they’re built for high-efficiency, not necessarily endurance. We spend about $1,000/year keeping ours running. We’ve had an expert out to check our install, and the consensus appears to be that we’re just running it too hard. We have to run it about 5 hours a day to make our water quota, and being in coastal water doesn’t help any. We may squeeze another cruise out of the Spectra, but we’re eventually going to switch to a higher capacity high-pressure design that can make our daily water during the generator run.

New Batteries – This one has been on the table for a while. Our Lifeline AGMs are nearing their end of life. We are definitely going to switch to Lithium, which I am very much looking forward to. It’s the kind of project that has to be done proactively and probably while at the dock.

Cockpit Redesign – The cockpit has to support the functions of operating the boat when we’re underway, and regular life when we’re not. It doesn’t really do either very well. We’re trying to think outside the box about the cockpit design, even to the point of questioning the necessity of a helm seat. I think the kids sit there more than I do.

This list might seem overwhelming to some, but boat projects sustain me. I’d be bored without them. My only regret is that I have to keep making money to afford them.

We typically like to keep our life a mix of moving and sitting, and our ratio is a little skewed right now, but that will get straightened out eventually. We have to find something to do with ourselves this summer, but we’re gearing up for a bigger trip in the fall.

A big part of our life aboard involves learning to be self-sufficient. We make our own power and water. We carry tools for fixing engines, sewing canvas, grinding grain, and catching fish. We do school at home, work at home, and travel at home. We make things from scratch. But one thing we don’t do well is grow our own food. While we can eat fish (assuming we can catch them), having a garden or raising livestock isn’t really possible. Despite the limited deck space, we’ve tried a few gardening experiments. Sarah has the most interest in growing things and has made several attempts—one year she grew carrots and an aloe in pots on deck, and another year, she gave me a window-sill herb garden for my galley. These efforts have not been entirely successful. The pots on deck don’t appear to appreciate the Florida heat or salt spray. The windowsill herbs end up over- or under-watered. We’ve spent lots of money at garden centers with very little to show for it.

This spring, we decided to give it one more try and bought an Earthbox. It’s reputed to be a fool-proof way to grow a lot of produce in a very small space. It has a special reservoir for watering from the bottom, but it drains well, so it’s supposed to be self-watering. It came as a kit, with calcium carbonate to condition the soil and a year’s supply of fertilizer to feed the plants. It has a reflective plastic cover to keep heat (and salt) out and moisture in. Basically, you set it up and it takes care of itself. Since we like to use fresh herbs, we started with an herb garden, growing, like the song lyrics: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. While we couldn’t hope to feed 7 people out of one Earthbox, if the current experiment is successful, we could get additional boxes to grow things like tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, and salad greens to supplement our trips to the grocery store and farmer’s market. Even if the attempt is ultimately unfruitful, we will have helped a kid to pursue a worthwhile hobby and enjoyed the effort. Better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all.

Recipe: Meatloaf with Fresh Herbs
Prep time: 1 1/2 hours Makes: 2 loaves (1 1/2 lbs.)

1 pound ground turkey (pastured is best)
2 pounds grass-fed ground beef
2 eggs
1 cup bread crumbs
1 small onion, finely chopped
3 cloves fresh garlic, peeled and minced
2 teaspoons fresh chives, minced
2 teaspoons fresh parsley, minced
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
2 teaspoons rosemary leaves, minced
2 teaspoons fresh sage, minced
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons deli mustard with horseradish
2 tablespoons organic ketchup

Combine all ingredients and mix well, using hands to knead until you have a consistent texture. Divide into two loaves and bake at 350° for one hour or until internal temperature reads 160°. Slice and serve with ketchup.

Going to a boat show was an important part of our lives when we were dreaming of sailing away. Before we bought Take Two, I remember driving with Jay and his dad across Alligator Alley to the Miami Boat Show and carrying 9-month-old Sarah (now nearly eleven) in the baby backpack. I crawled on and off boats all day, went to inspiring seminars, talked to authors and bought their books, and looked longingly at all the vendors’ booths, selling things we would need “someday,” the names of which were part of a mysterious and romantic lexicon: foul weather gear, roller furlers, gensets, spinnaker snuffers, snatch-blocks, and drogues. These words have lost their luster through common use, and I recently discovered that the boat show holds no more magic for me.

We drove to Miami for the Strictly Sail part of the Boat Show last weekend and found the whole experience to be a bit disappointing. Aside from the purchase (at those fabulous boat show prices!) of a WinchRite, to make winching a cinch, and a few conversations with vendors like Winslow about re-certifying our life raft and Force 10 about what an oven replacement might look like, the whole show had a been-there-done-that feel to it. Jay was able to talk to several sailmakers about what kind of reaching sail we need to have made and whether it needs a sock or a furler on a bowsprit, but he could easily have done that without the family tagging along. The kids, who used to look forward to a Boat Show like the circus coming to town, looked extremely bored, surrounded by booths full of sailing gear as familiar to them as a toothbrush or a spoon. The highlight of the day, actually, was having a nice lunch out with “Skipper” (Jay’s dad), who had driven over to talk to the Moorings Company about their boat, which comes out of charter this year.

Sitting in Liza Copeland’s “Cruising in the Caribbean” seminar, I had an epiphany: I should be standing up front instead of sitting in back. I’m not boasting when I say I have now achieved “expert” status in areas like: Provisioning for the Bahamas, Organizing and Stowing Gear on Your Boat, Taking Small Children Cruising, Transitioning from Land-lubber to Full-time Live-aboard, Making Offshore Passages with a Family, Boat-Schooling, and What it Means to be a Good First Mate. There are plenty of things about which I have a lot left to learn, and Liza’s talk and slide show helped psyche me and the kids up for what is likely to be our next big adventure, but on the whole, we are in a different place than we were the last time we went to a boat show. We are, in effect, the people we used to look up to.

After lunch, we ran into some friends we met in the mooring field in Boot Key Harbor last year. Christina reminds me of myself not so long ago—pushing a toddler in a stroller out in front of her pregnant belly. I know what she feels like, at the beginning of the journey, still trying to figure out what raising a family on the water will look like, not sure how to proceed, but willing to take a shot at an unconventional life. The boat show crowd is full of retirees and childless couples with time and money to pursue their sailing dreams, but I feel excited when I see young families there with children in tow, hoping to break free.

While I have not lost my nostalgia for past boat shows that served to inspire us and help us reach our goals, and for the people we met there who have become close friends, I recognize that going back was a mistake. What we need to boost us into new adventures will not be found inside a tent, so perhaps going back for us should mean giving back—thinking seriously of what we could do to inspire more families to get out there and do it.

Part of the beauty of homeschool is the ability to design it according to your own priorities and principles. One of our principles is “life is school”. This means two things to us. One, that education isn’t only found in books and classrooms, and two, that learning opportunities can be found in daily life if you have the flexibility to recognize and take advantage of them.

We love it when these opportunities come from people outside our family. Because of our transient lifestyle we get to know of a lot of interesting and talented people, and occasionally they’ll take an interest in sharing their knowledge with our kids.

This has numerous benefits for the kids. It allows them to learn about things that we can’t necessarily teach. It allows them to form independent relationships with other people, and be themselves away from the influence of their family. It allows them to learn about work.

Fort Pierce is lacking in a lot of things, but it is rich in these kinds of learning opportunities. While we’re here, we’ve dedicated one day a week for what we call “work study”, where the kids go off and pursue their own interests.

Eli is taking flying lessons. All of the kids have spent tons of time on Combat Flight Simulator 3, which has pretty realistic flight dynamics, and is one of our few approved video games. Eli is studying and collecting hours in the air with an instructor that he can use to qualify for a license when he’s 16.

Aaron goes to work with a friend of ours who is a marine mechanic/engineer. Some days Aaron just fetches tools or sweeps out the shop, but other days he’s genuinely helpful. On those days he comes home extremely dirty but also very happy. But every day he learns, and every day he gets to hang out with real working men, and not just his sits-at-a-computer-all-day dad. We like to envision it sort of like the barber shop scene in Gran Torino. I meet people now who know me as “Aaron’s dad” and tell me about what he’s fixed on their boats.

Sarah helps out at a horse ranch. She loves horses and enjoys just being around them. She feeds them, bathes them, and shovels out their stalls. She’s approaching the point where her help is valuable enough to trade for her riding lessons. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day she has a job working with horses.

Sam joins the older three for private kickboxing lessons volunteered from a friend. Jim works them hard and they’re learning fast. Apart from the physical skills, they’re also learning the discipline and respect that is typical in martial arts training. I often go just to watch.

We’re all about exploration, growth, and progress toward a vaguely defined goal. These kinds of activities help us feel like we’re still moving forward, even while the boat is tied to the dock.

Two days ago, I was fishing off the back of the boat. A couple of minutes later, I had a mangrove snapper on my line. It was twelve inches long. I ate it for dinner!

We learned a long time ago that PVC fenders and Florida sun do not mix. They get gummy and attract dirt. In addition to looking terrible, they also smear the sticky mess on the side of the boat and it is nearly impossible to get off. As with PVC dinghies, the solution is to keep them covered.

Initially, we used the fleecy kind from Taylor Made (the maker of the fenders). These worked okay to protect the fenders, but the fabric was not up to the rigors of the sun or being constantly ground against the dock. Eventually they began to look ratty and Tanya decreed they must be replaced.

I found some that seemed to be made from better material, but it was still a fuzzy “blanket” type of material. Tanya wouldn’t hear of it. They must be made of Sunbrella for durability and to complement our color scheme. I couldn’t find any made of Sunbrella, and I didn’t want to make them myself. We deliberated on this for a while with our old nasty fenders a daily reminder. Finally, Tanya declared she would make them.

Now, Tanya is not a girl with a lot of free time on her hands. She still undertakes the occasional project, but usually at the expense of something else. She once volunteered to edit a friend’s book and we didn’t eat for a week. So I was dubious about her making the covers. I thought it would be cheaper to buy them pre-made (at twice the cost) than suffer the disruption of her making them, but I dutifully ordered the material.

The fabric arrived and sat in the cockpit untouched for several days, people stepping over it to get in and out of the boat, without any mention of when this was going to get done. It was bothering me, but I knew better than to ask. I was willing to do it myself at this point, but I couldn’t offer either. Any pressure would be received as lack of appreciation for all she does for our family, and this is seriously unwise (and untrue). A hint was required.

So one evening she “caught” me measuring a fender. Of course, I had measured them before I ordered the fabric. That did the trick and the next day the fender cover factory went into full gear. She knocked out seven fender covers, each better and faster than the last.

There is a certain satisfaction in doing something yourself, a kind of joy in making something. And for as hard as it is to get a project started, it’s almost as hard to stop. We call that the First Law of Projects. Tanya was still in a full-blown cover-making frenzy when we ran out of fenders. She began to eye the neighbor’s coverless fenders. People were going to be getting fender covers for Christmas. Fortunately it passed before things got out of hand.

Now we have great looking fenders again. The Sunbrella should last a very long time in the sun and stand up much better to abrasion from the dock. They are louder, though, creaking as the Sunbrella rubs against the boat, and I’m not sure how well the boat is going to stand up to abrasion from the Sunbrella. Time will tell.

A few days later I was down in one of our lazarettes, the one where we store the fenders, and saw… way in the back… an eighth fender.

Take Two’s latest piece of electronic gadgetry is an AIS transceiver. This broadcasts our name, position, course, and speed for others to see. We’ll appear on the navigational displays of vessels equipped to receive AIS and they’ll be notified if our courses converge. They’ll be able to hail us on the radio by name, or by “dialing” our number. There are even base stations that receive the AIS information and publish it on the internet.

For years, we’ve been content to only receive AIS data from others and had no interest in transmitting our own. Typically I prefer to be anonymous, but recent experiences have shown me a few reasons to transmit.

In August, we were off Cape Canaveral when a big thunderstorm rolled off the coast as two cruise ships left the port. Visibility was zero and our radar display was just a big green blob. Fifty knot gusts were kicking up a nasty chop, and our best option was to run with it. I would like to think that the ships could see us on radar, but if ours couldn’t see a cruise ship, how could I be sure that theirs could see a sailboat? It was too loud to call and ask. Knowing they could see us on AIS would have greatly reduced the stress of that situation.

When entering Chesapeake Bay in the middle of the night, we were hailed by Virginia Pilots as “sailing vessel approaching the north tunnel”. There was a ship behind us heading for the same tunnel crossing that we were, and Virginia Pilots wanted to make sure we saw it, and were not going to be in the way when it got there. It was a very pleasant exchange, and I was grateful for the call, but also somewhat chagrined that they felt it was necessary. Had we been transmitting, I think they would not have been concerned.

On our 5-day passage back from the Chesapeake, we were in the company of a boat named New Moon. We very rarely saw them, and then only as a light or a sail on the horizon. But because they were transmitting AIS we were aware of their presence. I actually found it comforting that they were there, experiencing the same conditions we were. Tanya called them once on a lonely night watch hundreds of miles from anywhere, and I think they were surprised to learn of our existence. The camaraderie we felt was totally one-sided.

Somewhere off Georgia, we were hailed by the US Navy with “sailing vessel in vicinity of 30 degrees 49 minutes north, 79 degrees 22 minutes west, this is Warship 59”. They had to repeat this several times before I figured out they were talking to us. The coordinates they were giving were not very close to our current position and it wasn’t immediately apparent if we were “in the vicinity”. I think the Navy receives AIS, but generally does not transmit for obvious reasons. If they had our AIS information, hopefully they would have hailed us by name. Incidentally, Warship 59 was clearing a box so they could play with their guns and wanted us out of the way.

Originally, I only saw AIS as information for my own navigational use (and entertainment). I wanted to see everyone else, but didn’t want anyone to see me. That position forced us to act defensively in every situation, and also denied others the use of our information. Now I see that there are advantages to transmitting, even if they don’t benefit us directly. Transmitting AIS data makes us part of a community, and in any community there is a give-and-take. We are giving up some anonymity, but the more vessels that transmit, the more it benefits the community as a whole. Eventually, some kind of EPIRB or AIS transponder will probably be mandated for anyone going offshore, but we’re choosing to transmit now voluntarily, despite the extra cost, in the interest of better navigational information for everybody.