Watching the ships go by
One of the things that you can do on a WordPress blog is see which of the links that you post get clicks. To my horror, no one, exactly no one, has clicked on the link I posted a couple of days ago to the ShipAIS website. My friends, you are quite simply bonkers.
AIS is a collision avoidance system used by sea-going ships. Heroic anoraks monitor this system, and keep track of ship’s movements on the ridiculously time-wasting ShipAIS site.
Old Charley was staying in Southwold a few weeks ago, and she said that at night the horizon lit up like a city because of the dozens of ships that are lying in what I now know is called the Southwold anchorage. Using this brilliant website, you can find out the names of these ships; and even look at photos of them. For those occasional visitors to my site of a railway enthusiastic bent, your life is about to be transformed…
Fantastic – how do they all negotiate the Channel without crashing into each other? This post opened up a new world of nautical geekiness – thousands of pics of container vessels, dredgers, tugs… Hours of on-screen daydreams
I know… isn’t it? I was talking to some old sailors at the Abergavenny Food Festival this weekend, and they all knew about it already. Ship spotters are cooler than train keens, or so they reckoned.
I don’t know how I missed that either; the best link you’ve posted EVER!
how the hell did I miss that link? I was able to see that Condor 10, of fond memory, is zooming across the Baie de Mont St Michel at this very moment, and I imagined myself again sitting on the bridge slurping coffee and gasconading with the chiefy…