"Larry" wrote in message
...
"Paul" wrote in news:44f298f3$0$34535
:

Name: LADY MADONNA
Callsign: 3EKW8


Of course, in our usual mode of "strict radio silence", which I will never
understand, we could have CALLED 3EKW8 on Channel 16 or 13 and had a chat
with the mate on duty to ask him why his AIS was transmitting the wrong
position, right??

Did he not answer your call?? If not, did you try his MMSI on Ch 70? That
usually wakes them up, these days.

I'm sure the Lady Madonna doesn't bite. One first mate tried to trade
Lionheart for his 950' containership, but I told him my VISA card couldn't
feed it at the fuel barge...(c; I always call them late at night on 13.
It keeps both of us awake. They're usually bored to tears.


Larry,

Actually, we had a nice chat on channel 16. They said they were picking up
"soap" at Cedros Island, then heading back to Japan. Perhaps he meant
nitrates, rather than soap? Lady Madonna is a bulk carrier. Anyway, the
language barrier made it seem unlikely that I would have been able to carry
on a technical conversation. Also, by the time I noticed the position
difficulty we had signed off, and I didn't want to bug them for what I
thought was an error in my own software.

We usually try to hail passing ships when on the high seas, since we can go
for over a week between sightings. Sometimes they answer, other times I
think they don't want to wake up the English-speaking crewmember. Having
AIS give me the ship name does make it more likely that they will respond
when I call.

As for the possibility that their GPS had lost lock, after my original
posting I looked at the message details in my AIS NMEA capture file, and the
data fields that should be used to indicate "position fixing" problems show
a high-accuracy fix during the encounter. Also, my own GPS status was good.
Obviously something was wrong, though.

Regards,
Paul