AIS Fleet is our companion site for the other half of boating life: keeping an eye on boats rather than logging your own. It draws the AIS traffic it has received on a live chart, it e-mails you every time a boat you follow departs and every time one arrives, and, for a boat that keeps her log with Saillogger and shares it, it shows you a good deal more than AIS alone can.

It runs in a phone or desktop browser, there is nothing to install, and following a few boats is free.

Getting started

1. Go to https://aisfleet.com and enter your e-mail address.
2. A six-digit sign-in code arrives by e-mail. Type it in. There is no password to choose or remember.
3. The first time, you are asked for your full name. That is how other members see you when no boat is linked to your account; once one is, they see her name first. Your e-mail address is never shown to them.

Your AIS Fleet account is separate from your Saillogger account. The same address can hold both, and signing in to one does not sign you in to the other.

The live map

The map opens on a marine chart carrying the AIS traffic AIS Fleet has received, and it refreshes itself while you watch.

• Boats are coloured by type. The Types button in the top-right is the filter and the legend at once: turn a category off to quieten the chart, and the swatches tell you what each colour means.
• The filter can never hide one of yours. A boat you follow, a fleet mate, your own boat and the boat you have selected keep their name and their marker whatever else you switch off. A boat you follow goes further: she is put on the map wherever she is, so you do not have to be looking at the right piece of water to see her.
• A moving boat is drawn as an arrow on her heading, a stopped one sits quietly, and the selected boat carries a ring.
• Zoom in and smaller vessels join the picture. Where a view holds more traffic than the map will draw, it says the view was truncated rather than dropping the rest without telling you, and zooming in narrows it.
• Light and dark themes are in the account menu, behind the person icon.

Finding a boat

Use Search boats rather than hunting the chart. You can search by name, MMSI, call sign or IMO number, and each result carries how far away the boat is. Distances are measured from your own boat when one is linked to your account and has reported recently, and otherwise from the middle of the map you are looking at; the results say which of the two they used.

What a boat's panel tells you

Tap a boat and her panel opens with what AIS reports about her: name, MMSI, type, flag, length and beam, her speed and course, whether she is moving or stopped, and when she was last heard.

• 24h track draws where she has been over the last day, as AIS heard her.
• Her photos open full screen, with the count on the cover so you know how many there are.
• Follow and Message are on the same row of actions.
• The panel collapses to a slim bar when you want the chart back, and the boat stays selected. Fit track on the map frames the whole line when one is drawn.

Following boats

Following is one-way and needs no approval. There are two ways to start:

• Tap the boat on the map and press Follow on her panel.
• Open Following in the map's top-right controls and choose Find a boat to follow, which searches by name, MMSI, call sign or IMO number.

The Following panel lists every boat you follow, including the ones with no recent position, with a line each on where she is and when she was heard. Tapping a row takes you to her on the map, Show all on the map frames the lot, and Unfollow on the row ends it and frees a slot.

How many boats you can follow depends on your plan; see Plans and limits.

If the search says We are not tracking MMSI ... yet, no receiver has reported that boat to us, so there is nothing to follow yet. Follow it anyway asks the AIS network to watch for that number, and the reply says so: come back and follow her once she appears, which is the step that starts the e-mails. Worth checking the nine digits first, since a typo looks exactly like a boat we have never heard.

Departure and arrival e-mails

This is the part that means you do not have to keep a map open.

• When she gets under way, the e-mail says she has departed and, for a Saillogger boat that shares with you, names where she left from. It carries a map of where she is.
• When she arrives, it names where she got to, and where the passage began when we can tell. A Saillogger boat whose pages are open to everyone and who publishes her Individual Log Pages brings a map of the passage she has just completed; otherwise the map shows where she stopped.
• Her owner's photo of the boat leads the message where there is no map to show and they publish one.
• Every one of these e-mails links straight to that boat on your map.
• There is no digest, so three trips in a day means six e-mails, a departure and an arrival each time. A working ferry is worth thinking about before you follow her.

Notification settings, in the account menu, has a switch for each kind of e-mail: Followed boats, New followers, Direct messages and Fleet messages. They all start on, on every plan including the free one, and each of those e-mails carries a link back to that screen. Sign-in codes and the answer to a boat claim are not on that list: they are sent because you asked for something, and they arrive whatever the switches say.

Boats that keep their log with Saillogger

A boat running Saillogger can share far more than her AIS position, and this is where AIS Fleet does something a general AIS site cannot. When her owner shares with you, her panel gains:

• Their own photo of the boat, published from their Saillogger profile.
• Her journal: the dated notes and photos posted from the trip.
• Show track: the real logged voyage she is on, drawn from her own log rather than from AIS.
• Her own position reports, sent from aboard whenever she has an Internet connection, so she can keep moving on your map where nothing ashore is receiving her.

Two separate switches sit behind that, and both are the owner's:

1. Sharing and Live Tracking & Monitoring decide whether you get the detail at all: the journal, the logged voyage and their photo of the boat.
2. Update your position on AIS Fleet decides where the marker itself comes from. On, and the boat reports her own position whenever she has an Internet connection, including far out where no receiver can hear her. Off, and she appears exactly as AIS receivers hear her, which for most boats means silence once she is offshore.

Her MMSI also has to be known to the AIS network, since that is how AIS Fleet identifies boats. Her logbook keeps recording without a connection either way, and it catches up when she is back online.

If the boat is password protected

Some boaters put an access password on their pages. Following such a boat offers you the choice: enter the password and you see everything they share, or follow with AIS positions only. You can enter it later from her panel, and if the owner changes the password you are asked for the new one.

A boat her owner keeps private is followed the way any AIS target is, showing her broadcast position and nothing of the owner's own.

A boater's sharing and password changes take effect immediately, on the boats already following them as much as on new ones. Following them once does not bank what they were sharing that day.

Your own boat on AIS Fleet

Linking a boat to your account is what opens the rest of AIS Fleet: the fleets your boat belongs to and their chats, the list of who follows her, and messages that carry her name.

1. In the account menu, choose Have a boat? Claim her.
2. Enter her MMSI and confirm the boat we found in the AIS network.
3. Upload one document showing that MMSI is assigned to you or your boat: an FCC Ship Station License or a BoatUS or Sea Tow MMSI certificate in the United States, an Ofcom Ship Radio Licence in the United Kingdom, or your own radio authority's equivalent. A phone photo or a one-page PDF is fine, up to 20 MB, and you are welcome to cover anything that is not the boat, your name and the MMSI.

A Saillogger crew member checks the document against the MMSI, and that is all it is used for. You hear from us within 48 hours, the file deletes itself within 72 hours of upload whether it was approved or not, and we keep no copies.

Fleets

A fleet is a group of boats on one map with a chat of its own: a club, a rally, a class association, a family with two boats.

• Fleets are created on Saillogger by a Saillogger boater. Friends, fleets and messages covers that side.
• You are in a fleet when its owner adds your boat's MMSI to the roster, so give them your MMSI and ask. That needs your boat linked to your account.
• The Fleets tab opens a picker, and choosing a fleet gives you its own map with the members on it, a roster panel listing every boat in it, and Fleet chat.
• The roster carries both kinds of member: boats that log with Saillogger, and boats that appear on AIS alone. Positions on a fleet map are the AIS positions of the boats in it.
• Fleet chat is for current members only, even where the fleet map itself is public.

Your plan sets how many of your fleets are active at once. Any beyond that stay listed, so you can see what a larger plan would switch on.

Messages

You can write to the boater behind a boat you follow, to anyone who follows your boat, and to your fleet mates. That is the whole of it: a member you have no connection with cannot be messaged, and neither can you.

• You are shown by your boat's name when one is linked, and by the full name on your account otherwise. Never by your e-mail address.
• Each message you send e-mails the other person, so a conversation works when neither of you is looking at the site.
• Messages are kept for 30 days and then removed for everyone, photos included. If something matters, keep it somewhere else.
• One-to-one messages work without a linked boat. Fleet chat needs one, because fleet membership follows the boat.

Vessel photos

The vessel catalog is built by members, and any member can contribute.

• Open a boat and choose Add photo, or start from the Photos tab, which also lists everything you have contributed.
• Every submission is reviewed before it appears, under the AIS Vessel Photo Contribution Agreement. While it waits, you see your own photo on the boat marked Awaiting review; nobody else does.
• Published catalog photos carry an AIS Fleet watermark and credit the photographer.
• Photos often store the exact spot and time they were taken. A checkbox at upload keeps that location out of the catalog and the public display. The original file can still carry it, so strip the metadata first if you would rather it was not stored at all.

A boat owner's own photo, published through their Saillogger profile, is a different thing. It belongs to them, so it is not moderated here and carries no watermark.

Plans and limits

• A paid plan is about following more boats and being in more fleets. The map, the search, the departure and arrival e-mails, the photos and the messages are the same on every plan, the free one included.
• The free plan is not a trial and does not expire.
• Plans are monthly, in US dollars, and are managed on the Plan screen in the account menu. Cancelling leaves the plan running to the end of the period you have paid for.
• Reaching the follow limit stops new follows, never existing ones. Unfollow a boat you no longer watch, or move up a plan.
• These limits are AIS Fleet's own. Saillogger's Friends feature has its own separate limit for Saillogger boaters.

If you also use Saillogger

Your boat is on AIS Fleet already, from the moment an AIS receiver has heard her MMSI. You do not need an account there for people to follow you, and following you costs them nothing.

• Two switches decide how much a follower sees: Sharing and Live Tracking & Monitoring in Sharing settings. With them on, followers get your journal, your logged track and the fuller update e-mails. With them off, your boat can still be followed as plain AIS traffic, as any vessel can, and followers get simpler e-mails built from the AIS signal alone.
• Update your position on AIS Fleet, on the same tab, decides whether the position they see comes from your own boat or only from what AIS receivers hear.
• AIS Fleet followers appear on your followers list with an AIS Fleet badge, and you get an e-mail when a new one arrives, exactly as for a Saillogger follower.
• To follow other boats yourself, you can use either: Friends inside Saillogger, covered in Friends, fleets and messages, or an AIS Fleet account for the wider AIS picture and its fleets.

For family and friends without Saillogger is written to be forwarded to whoever wants to follow you, and covers both routes side by side.

Privacy and safety

• Most of what AIS Fleet shows is AIS: positions vessels broadcast publicly over the radio. Coverage varies and local rules still apply.
• Anything that belongs to a Saillogger boater, their track, their journal, their photo of the boat and their own position reports, is shown only because they chose to share it, and a change to that choice takes effect immediately.
• What the owner's switches control is the detail, not the follow. Turning off Live Tracking & Monitoring, or setting or changing an access password, takes back the journal, the logged track and the boat photo. The boat stays on the AIS map: a follower keeps her position and the plainer departure and arrival e-mails built from it.
• If it is the position you want back, that is a different row. Update your position on AIS Fleet is the switch that stops Saillogger sending your own fixes, and neither the access password nor the Live Tracking switch turns it off; the master Sharing switch does. Turning it off is not a disappearing act either: whatever your own AIS transponder broadcasts is still received and reported, outside Saillogger entirely. Share your boat walks through all of it.
• Following is not managed follower by follower, so if the worry is harassment or your safety, write to [email protected]: we will look at the account behind it with you, and there are steps open to us that are not open to you.
• Measurement on AIS Fleet is cookieless, which is why the site has no cookie banner. You must be 18 or over to hold an account. The Terms and Privacy Policy are linked from the account menu.

If something is not working

• "We are not tracking MMSI ... yet" when you search for a boat to follow. No receiver has reported her to us. Follow it anyway asks the AIS network to watch for that number; it does not start a follow, so search for her again once she has appeared and follow her then. Until you do, no e-mails are on their way.
• "This MMSI has not appeared in our AIS network yet" when you claim a boat. Claiming needs a boat we already know, so check the nine digits and come back once she has been broadcasting within range of a receiver.
• A boat you follow has not moved for a long time. Her marker sits at her last known position rather than disappearing, so read the last-heard time on her row or panel before reading the chart. An offshore boat is usually out of receiver range; a Saillogger boat that shares reports from aboard instead, whenever she has a connection.
• A boat you follow is not on the chart at all. No receiver has ever reported a position for her, so there is nothing to draw. She stays in your Following list until she is heard. If instead you never saw her in the list, the follow was probably never made: an MMSI we had not heard when you searched for it needs following once it appears.
• You are asked for a password. That is the owner's access password for their public pages, not an AIS Fleet password. Ask them for it, or follow with AIS positions only and enter it later from her panel.
• A boat's journal and track have gone. Her owner has changed what they share, or changed the password. Enter the current one from her panel, or carry on following her AIS position.
• The e-mails have stopped. Check the Followed boats row in Notification settings. If the boat has stopped sharing, the departure and arrival e-mails continue in their simpler, AIS-based form.
• You cannot follow another boat. You are at your plan's limit. Unfollow one, or move up a plan.

Anything else, write to [email protected] or ask on the community forum.