Boatfagging 101

This thread is a companion of Planefagging 101 and intended to assist /qr/ and /qrb/ as a resource for links and analysis of vessel traffic, including military, merchant and private vessels.

Questions concerning vessel tracking and maritime matters are welcome from all.

If you have a resource for tracking, please drop the link in your post with a short description line about it. Feel free to include a longer summary and instructions on use after the description.

All boatfags (and planefags!) are welcome to post their opinions on traffic analysis. Non-boatfag responses opinions are also welcome if you think you have some insight that is useful.

Fair Winds and Following Seas, o7.

Please do not forget to salute the flag and the quarterdeck on your way down the brow, Patriots.

Giantkiller out.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-36.9/centery:27.8/zoom:2

Marine Traffic is a great website for tracking vessels.

It will identify known ships/boats if you click on them, if unknown it will generally state the type of vessel if known.

https://www.vesselfinder.com/

Vessel Finder is a very similar alternative to Marine Traffic.

It uses pretty much the same data, although its database of known ships may vary slightly (I personally haven't found variance yet, but I'd bet it exists somewhere.)

https://www.myshiptracking.com/

My Ship Tracking

Again, it's using similar data to the other two posted above. Not as familiar with it.

House Trackers

Cargo lines are known as "houses", such as MSC, Cosco, Maersk, Evergreen, etc.

Houses usually have their own website for checking their own house ship locations. Sometimes those sites will have a little more publicly available data on their own house ships, such as up-to-date speed, course, and destination. Most also have a cargo tracking function, but that is usually either a "pay" function or you have to have a tracking number for the cargo you want to follow.

Something to keep in mind if you're interested in a civilian commercial vessel. No links provided, it's a pretty easy dig. Questions welcomed on this topic.

Vessel Finders and Registries

If you're interested in a particular vessel, it may be in a database for some of the marine vessel trackers. Usually they have a "search by name" function, but some also have separate vessel finder websites. Here are a couple:

https://www.myshiptracking.com/vessels

My Ship Tracking Vessel Database

https://www.vesseltracker.com/en/vessels.html

Vessel Tracker Shipping Database

For cruise ships, you can also use this as both a finder and tracker:

https://www.cruisin.me/cruise-ship-tracker/

~or~

https://www.livecruiseshiptracker.com/

~or~

https://sailwx.info/shiptrack/cruiseships.phtml

For vessels near-shore, you may want to use the radar tracker here:

https://www.radar-live.com/p/ship-radar.html

Many yachts are owned or leased by owners to companies that rent them for vacations, etc. These rental companies my also provide some information about "their" yacht locations, but that's spotty at best.

Basic Ship Recognition pt 1

How to determine ship types at a glance.

Commercial Ships - the vast majority of ships being commercial, they can be broken down into the following categories:

Container Ships - these are the big ships that look like they have semi-trailer type (or box-car type) boxes stacked on top of them. Those boxes are known as "Conex Boxes".

Tankers - these are wide, large ships with a smooth deck and several skinny cranes on them. Look for lots of pipes running on the top of the deck. Usually it's pretty obvious that a tanker ship is a tanker. Some will say LNG for "Liquid Natural Gas" and may have a round structure on top that looks similar to an oversized propane tank on a gas grill (these things are basically floating fuel air explosive bombs).

Bulk Carriers - bulk carriers CAN be confused with oilers since they are flat and have cranes, but the difference is that you will see what looks like big box-top squares on the top. These are doors to the holds of the ship. Bulk carriers carry things like iron ore, corn, coal and other items that can just be dumped into the holds.

Car Carriers - these are huge wall-sided ships that basically look like a floating shoe box. They carry cars and vehicles. When you see one your first thought will be, "How does that thing keep from tipping over?"

Ro-Ro (for Roll-On, Roll-Off Cargo) Ships - I know, it sounds a lot like a car carrier. It's not, although some of them look a lot like car carriers and work about the same way. You can tell a Ro-Ro by a weird fold-up ramp at the stern (back end) of the ship. The ramp is sometimes diagonal when folded up vertically. Aside from the weird ass-end, the ferry service ro-ro's tend to look more like container ships towards the bow.

Pics of all 5 included.

Basic Ship Recognition, pt 2

Smaller cargo vessels are referred to as Coasters because they usually travel along the coast.

Other vessel types are Tugs and Auxiliaries. Tugs are exactly what they sound like. Auxiliaries are usually work boats.

Barges are obvious. However, they usually are not pulled by tugs, but are pushed by Pusher Boats.

Pic showing the difference between a round-bowed tug and a pusher boat attached.

Basic Ship Recognition, pt 3

As far as the US Navy is concerned, merchant vessels can be generally categorized into 3 groups shown in the pic. This allows more generalized identification of merchants when the observer can't be certain of type.

Basic Visual Signals

For ships that are physically observed (this happened not too long ago with the USNS Mercy), questions arose concerning flags.

There is a great resource here:

https://www.navy.mil/navydata/communications/flags/flags.html

This shows all of the signal flags, their letter or number and their common international code meaning.

Keep in mind that, depending on what is being used, the flags can mean either the international code (the international code pennant will be flown above it, if so), the letter, or it can be part of a signal that has a secret Navy code assigned.

When you see a US Navy ship that has four flags flying on the outer side, and the TOP flag is a blue and white checkered flag (the letter "N" or November), that is the ship's 4-letter international call sign.

For instance, the 4-letter international call sign for the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) is NABE...yes, when feasible, the Navy likes to make the call sign relate to the ship.

A list of international call signs (US and many other countries) up to date as of 2009 can be found here:

https://www.p530-daphne.dk/Downloads/call%20sign%20book%20for%20ships.pdf

Boatfag Reporting Tips pt 1

Like Planefagging, if you're gonna boatfag it is a must to back your written report up with a screen cap (or as many as necessary to get your point across). I recommend a browser extension for screen captures that will also allow you to highlight, draw lines, arrows, circles, etc., so you can make marks to indicate what you're talking about in your written report. I use "Snapshot" in my Opera browser.

Sometimes, you may need to take a "wide angle" cap of a larger area and then focus in on a smaller area with one or two more caps to really explain what you're seeing, if it involves multiple vessels. From a "zoomed out" view, ships close together can overlap so much that it looks like one ship...you get the point.

Boatfagging is SLOW. It's not quick-action stuff like Planefagging, so it helps to "hand off" a tracked vessel to other Boatfags and ask Bakers to put out a call for future Boatfags to keep eyes on, if it's important. Use your best judgment, but keep in mind that the USNS Mercy tied to the pier in NYC day after day is not grounds for an "eyes on" call. Just keep an eye on it as part of your daily routine.

Boatfag Reporting Tips pt 2

When making a Boatfag report, a basic report should contain all of the following whenever possible:

1. The name of the ship you're tracking, or if it is unknown, the suspected name. If you have no idea, call it a "Skunk". That's the USN lingo.

2. The heading of the ship. A specific bearing is great (i.e. "heading 270 degrees"), but if you don't have the info, then use major compass bearings (i.e. "N, NNE, NE, ENE, E," etc.). If you know "points", that's cool, but I suggest you refrain - don't get jiggy with it, please. Most folks don't know that shit. Heck, you may want to spell out "Northeast" instead of using the NE abbreviation, but let's figure anons will get the gist of it. Remember your audience.

3. If the bearing is changing (a turn, a circle, etc.), say "Looks like she is turning port/starboard/circling".

4. Next, report the ship's speed. If your target ship is not moving, it is considered Dead In the Water. I suggest you say, "Not moving," since DIW might alarm folks. If you say it or abbreviate "DIW", expect to have to explain that.

5. Type of ship, if known. If unknown, base your report on your best understanding of what it is. You'll have to speculate, so make it your best educated guess but don't go too far. If it's a "US Government vessel" as a lot of Navy ships are reported, and it has aircraft around it, that does not necessarily mean it's an aircraft carrier. Most ships can land helicopters. However, if you see a Planefag report of a C-2 cargo plane coming to a stop in mid-ocean right on top of the ship you're tracking, that IS an aircraft carrier (they are the only ones that can handle arrested landings of fixed-wing aircraft).

6. Destination, if known.

7. A brief description of what the ship appears to be doing based on information you know. For instance, if your target ship is tracking back and forth of the San Diego coast and there is a report of a plane going down in that area, it's safe to say your target is conducting a search. Again, if you don't know, it's ok to speculate but please do so based on sound inferences from other known information. Avoid wild ass guesses, please.

Boatfag Reporting Tips pt 3

Since ships do not move very fast compared to aircraft, sometimes it will be necessary to explain what you're seeing based on your observations over time. When your target is near land (which for us will usually be the case), it is helpful to relate where your target is located by reference to landmarks. For instance, when the USNS Mercy first moored in the lower harbor in NYC, it was reported as being about 1 nm from a bridge. That's helpful for anons because they can go to google maps (or whatever) and take a look for themselves to see what else is around the area.

That's also a wise move for Boatfags, too. You can look and see what is in the area and that can also help you in another way - in many harbors, there are public cameras all over the place! Do a quick search on google for live cams in the area and you may just be able to find a feed that puts you eyeballs-on your target ship. In addition, just like aircraft can sometimes "highlight" a location for anons to focus on, it is possible that a ship may do the same. Look for names/locations that have drawn attention in Q research in the past as best as you remember, or check in qresear.ch for it if you're not sure.

Responding to Contact Reports from Anons

If you get a query about a ship from anons, try to help out if you can by checking for them. We're specialists in Q Research, so when people ask us for help we should always be willing to try.

If an anon posts a report about a ship the anon observed, do the who/what/when/where to try and extract as much info from the anon as you can (without doxing, of course). Anons may be uninterested in giving exact location info, so at least try to get the harbor area.

A big deal in digging out info from any contact report will be finding out the kind of ship. If it's a commercial ship, try to get the name of the "house" which should be shown on the side (e.g., Maersk, Cosco, Wallenius, Evergreen), and if we're lucky hopefully the anon caught the ship's name, too. If it's a yacht it will be almost pointless without the name - passenger liners, though, should be easier because most people recognize them and identifying their sailings are pretty easy to do.

Also, get the port, whether the ship looked like it was coming or going, and the time it was observed. You should be able to take it from there and find a specific vessel that matches up with a little digging.

For Navy ships, that can be much tougher. Anons can generally identify aircraft carrier-type ships (keep in mind there are aircraft carriers and then amphibious ships that look like carriers because they also have aircraft), but may not be able to tell much difference between a destroyer and a command ship. Local newspapers usually report "big" departures (destroyers or larger) - that might make your job easier.

When you've gathered enough information that you think you can make a proper Boatfag Report from an anon's contact report, go for it.

You're Ready To Sail

A few final details to keep in mind...

1. If you're reporting ships close to each other or land, it may make sense to use a scale of yards. Otherwise, nautical miles (nm) is appropriate. Remember that 1nm = almost 2000 yds (2,025.37 to be exact).

2. If you're looking at a "Government vessel" in an area, make it a routine habit to ask Planefags to take a look and see what is in the area overhead.

3. Keep an eye on the weather in the area of your target vessel. It can affect what your target is doing, so knowing that will help inform you about its activities.

4. Be aware (or look for - or ask other anons, many have a good amount of knowledge) of military bases, especially Navy and Marine Corps bases, near your target vessel. For instance, you will see a number of vessels near San Clemente Island off the California coast near San Diego. San Clem is a training area for SEALS. Aside from general practice, they also use that area for practicing specific upcoming operations that are in a maritime environment.

Anchors Aweigh

That's it from me!

One final thing - I used Red Text on each heading, so if you get a question that relates to something you can either click on the link or just write the heading in as a reference if you remember, in case you get to reading and get buried down the thread.

Happy hunting.

>>42206

Much appreciated, Bakes. I've been a /qrb/ anon since 8bit unlocked it during Notables Creek (not meaning to sorta famefag but I'm kinda proud to be the first guy to post prayer here in our first official bread).

Brought Boatfagging here since the PF's have their Q&A hosted with us, it just seemed appropriate - and definitely a quieter place to do earnest discussion without having to fight thru the shillery.

Much appreciate your mapping and transpo skills, too! Have a great day