WHERE-IS-MY-STUFF?

Let’s see if we can find it shall we?

My great friend Dr. Ken “liver lips” Woodrow turned me on to this incredible website: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-118.9/centery:33.5/zoom:8

Here you can zoom in and see where the ship is carrying your kid’s Xmas gift Baby Yoda (if you know what vessel it’s on). Maybe you can hire a chopper and go out to the anchored ship and kick a few doors open. I wouldn’t want to face a kid after a childhood trauma of this magnitude.

If you open the tracker and zoom into LA you will see a hundred some ships waiting to unload.

I was flying out of San Diego on Nov. 11th and I can confirm that there were a good many ships swinging at anchor. I have heard certain folks on the political right saying Biden has personally prevented their kids from having a happy Christmas. It’s well known that he has continued the ‘War on Christmas’ (even though the decorations went up on malls weeks ago). That Biden, losing yet another war!

Well sure, Biden hates Christmas but the real culprit is that when the Virus hit, ocean shipping, trucking and affiliated supply-side companies cut way back. The second biggest container shipping company went bankrupt and there was a dramatic reduction of world trade. Then stimulus checks, combined with a reemergence of worldwide commerce, caused imports from China to spike by about 20% and this overloaded the fragile system.

We’ve got very used to immediate gratification and folks freak the heck out if they can’t get a Paltrow scented Goop candle delivered the next day because how can we exist without it for one-more hot-second? 

What would happen if we collectively just reduced our consumption. I know, I know, I’m kiddinggg.

Anywho, let’s get back to this marvelous ship tracker.

This global tracker is the Automatic Identification System or AIS. It includes all vessels that sign up for it and have the switch turned on. It is used by super tankers, cruise ships, fishing boats or even yachts large and small.

Basally air traffic control at sea. One type of vessel you won’t see are military vessels and, of course, drug runners.

Many of the website icons have pictures and descriptions of the vessels and you can track their positions in real time. Again no drug runners but it would make it easier to find them

If you fool around with the buttons you see marinas:

Even lighthouses, though they tend not to move very fast.

So if you’re finally burned out on porn and reruns of the Munsters give AIS a try. Endless fun watching ships moving at 30 mph across the globe, or in the case of major U.S. ports just sitting there rusting away.

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