<p>Have a son/daughter/boyfriend/girlfriend going to sea right now and wondering where in the world they are? Kind of like .."Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?!?"</p>
<p>A simple, free place to find out as long as you have the ship they are on's name is sailwx.info - the URL is:
Weather</a> observations and positions of ships at sea</p>
<p>If you don't know the radio call sign just enter the vessel's name on the search field at the bottom of the page.</p>
<p>Also note Sailwx is great to track a ship as it is on it's transit. The wx is for weather and vessels do weather reports generally at least once a day and as often as once every six hours or when certain conditions change. However as also noted once the vessel is within six or so hours of landfall they stop the reports (I forget the exact guideline) but its basically because there are other things that automatically capture, log and transmit the data (bouys, etc.). Fortunately for us, our son is on a ship that seems to be reporting weather data every six hours. A couple of other things by way of explanation as to the info reported when you scroll down:</p>
<p>Assuming date/time and lat (latitude) and lon (longitude) are not needing an explanation;
naut miles run is the distance since the last report the vessel traveled
SOA is speed of Advance/Approach the vessel averaged since last report in knots
wind from is the direction the wind is out of in degrees i.e. 000 is North, 090 is east; etc.
wind speed is in knots
barometer is barometric pressure in millibars
wave height is in meters e.g 1.0 = 3.3 feet..
air temp, dew point and water temp are in degrees celcius to convert to farenheit multiply by 1.8 and add 32...</p>