"... Most importantly, chartplotters and PC applications focus on being jacks-of-all-trades, while WatchMate has only one obsession: being the master of AIS systems. For example, it is the only system with alarm profiles. Entering from seaward into a busy harbor, there can be ships everywhere... All sorts of alarms go off while we try to stay in the channel and steer into the anchorage. But with WatchMate, we push a button to change from "offshore" to "harbor" profile and only targets that will come too close in a harbor appear on the screen ...

There is no better system for serious cruisers than Vesper Marine's AIS WatchMate displays ... This is a one-time expense that is far less than wreckage insurance, and will keep protecting you year after year."

Editor Tim Queeney highlights Vesper Marine's clever use of filtering and prioritization to avoid electronic traffic jams.

"After all, [an AIS display] may be able to display a 900-foot tanker six miles away that will have a closest point of approach (CPA) of five miles, but do you really need to see that?

Or is it a better solution to a cluttered display to only show those few contacts that represent the biggest threat? That's the approach taken by Vesper Marine"

When Australian teen Jessica Watson set off to become the youngest person to sail around the world, almost immediately she ran into a problem.

Her yacht, Ella's Pink Lady, collided with an oil tanker on the way to Sydney.

Once safely back in port, Jessica's support team installed a collision warning device called the AIS WatchMate, developed by Auckland's Vesper Marine. And she made it the rest of the way around the world without hitting anything.

"For a really vivid example of why Vesper's sophisticated AIS alarming is valuable, consider the Bermuda Race fleet crossing the shipping lanes last night ... I watched a Buzzard's Bay bound ship run right through the fleet last night and I'm guessing a lot of navigators learned how many controls you need to make AIS alarms effective rather than annoying. Which is what the WatchMate is so talented at.