Oh the perfect scenario – where you see a ship and can alter your course by 10 degrees in order to miss it without encountering other shipping!!
Like you, I wouldn’t think of radioing a ship routinely to ask what avoiding action he was intending to take … however I would feel quite happy about radioing them to ask what action they would like ME to take – and indeed the last time this was done the ship said they’d seen us and were altering course.
AIS also helped me this year when crossing just east of a TSS where there is a concentration of ships – it allowed me to track 10 ships without any worry and knowledge that we could ‘miss’ contact by a much smaller margin without stooging around for an hour or so to wait for them to pass.
Whilst AIS isn’t the be-all and end-all of collission avoidance it is a very useful addition to the yacht skippers arsenal of tools.
