Ship Tracker

[Live2Cruise]

Hello everyone. My sister just asked me if there is a website where she can track our ship while we are gone on a 17-night TA. I have done a Google search, but all of the ones popping up seem to be "sign up for an account" and tons of pop-ups that make it confusing. So, what (if any) is your go-to websites for family to track your ship?

[asquared17]

i think we use cruisemapper, which is usually fairly reliable. 

[twangster]

I use marinetraffic.com. 

Be aware that ship tracking only works when a ship is close enough to land to be picked up by an AIS receiver.  When ships are away from land the satellite based tracking costs money.

Some websites estimate the ship's position and draw it on a map based on the itinerary.  That's cool and all but hardly an accurate way to to track a ship.

[PPPJJ-GCVAB]

I like Cruisemapper.  You can control which ships to track by unselecting all and just selecting Royal.  Then pick the ship she is on and that one will be zeroed in on.  You can also see the weather conditions as well as smooth (or rough) seas.

[DoomSlayer]

44 minutes ago, twangster said:

Some websites estimate the ship's position and draw it on a map based on the itinerary.  That's cool and all but hardly an accurate way to to track a ship.

Back before GPS -- this was called dead reckoning.  It worked both ways, because the vessel or aircraft could not triangulate signals if too far from land and they would have to "guess" where they were.  And sometimes they would guess wrong and find themselves in unfriendly territory or airspace.  Look up flight 007 if you want to see what caused the introduction of GPS to be made available to civilians.

[ScottD]

I have a paid membership to marinetraffic because I work at a port,but even that only pings the ship once in a while when it's way out at sea