Navegar en España
We’ve been following lately discussions and conversations in our favourite forum (LTP) about how different sailing in Spain is from many other countries around us. Everything started after the article written by the popular writer Arturo Perez Reverte:
- As a start, in Spain, many people do never sail!! Their boats are kept as some sort of a status symbol anchored at our marinas.
- As a consequence, many specialized magazines are focused on high-purchasing-power users, that are not really willing to sail, and thus magazines turn into catalogues instead of real technical advisors.
- Bureaucracy and over-regulation are not helping the country to having a really flexible and powerful nautical industry able to listen to their customers.
- As a status symbol, many spaniards believe that the situation does not need to change because boaters are still seen as loaded people that basically don’t know what to do with their money. We know many really passionate people that suffer a really hard time doing its best to overcome the costly bureaucratic tasks and mandatory checks of their boats. We believe it is already expensive enough to mantain your boat in shape if besides you have to tackle infinite costly issues.
Since we started our project, we found more and more distance between the demands of the boaters, and the response from both nautical companies and the administration.
Nowadays there seems to be a lot of discussion about how to tackle low cost tourism. We believe it is a good moment to debate about the possibilities of helping and promoting an industry for which we have unparalelled conditions.
It would also be convenient trying to homogenize the different european legislations for an activity that in practice needs no frontiers.
SAR AIS
It seems like the Spanish authorities with Search and Rescue responsibilities are pioneering the way into AIS. The AIS SART standard starts being a reality in the rescue vehicles in Spain.
Our friend Eladio has sent us the AIS info sent by a target that in his screen showed up like a rectangle with blades near the Spanish coast. Once he clicked on the contact, the info that appeared was the following (check the mmsi, different from the Spanish 224……):
Type: S.A.R
SOG: 155kn
COG: 81.7°
Lat: 40°48.598′N
Long: 002°01.671′E
MMSI #: 111224101
RNG: 37.039NM
BRG: 119°
Any boater that has found him/herself in a scary situation will be aware of the undoubtful benefits of being located almost instantaneously by a rescue helicopter.
Si no puedes con tu enemigo…
We found this article from Reuters saying that officials in the USA and EU are close to reaching an agreement with which GPS and Galileo systems will be able to work together. According to this agreement, future GPS receivers will be dual, receiving both signals.
It is still unknown how producers would accept the dual system, but there is no doubt that the system could mean a huge improvement in positioning and tracking systems for the end user specially when coverage problems arise.
Noticias sobre alcances de AIS
We keep on tracking AIS ranges from our friends.
Our friend Manel has a True Heading receiver installed in Pals (Girona), and sends us this image that proves the huge propagation of AIS data. He is currently receiving data from Livorno (Italy).
Really spectacular, since we are talking about 312 NM distance!!
If you want to share the range you are getting from your place or in case you have no idea what we are talking about, leave us your comment. In both cases, they are very welcome 
and we’ll answer to you asap!
Tall Ships
The Tall Ship Race has gathered some really beautiful ships in Barcelona during these days. The Tall ship Race in the Med takes place between the 4th and 31th of July between Alicante-Barcelona-Toulon-Genova.
There were ships from all over the world, but there is no doubt in our opinion that the most beautiful one, a real work of art on water, is Italian’s Americo Vespuccio from which we attach a couple of pictures:
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More info here.