You can write to the boater behind a boat you follow, to anyone who follows your boat, and to the boats in your fleets. You do not need a boat of your own to send a message, only a connection with the person you are writing to.

New conversations need that connection. An existing direct conversation can continue after a follow or fleet membership ends, unless either participant blocks the other.

How you appear

• By your boat's name when one is linked to your account, and by the full name on your account otherwise.
• Never by your e-mail address. Nobody on AIS Fleet sees it.

Starting a conversation searches by boat name, not by a person's name and not by an address, which is the same rule from the other direction.

Writing

• Open a vessel and choose Message, or start from the Messages screen.
• Each message you send e-mails the other person, unless they have turned Direct messages or Fleet messages off in their own notification settings, so a conversation usually works when neither of you is looking at the site.
• You can attach photographs, a few per message.
• You can react to a message with an emoji, one per person, tapped to add and tapped again to take away.
• Mark all read clears the unread count on the inbox.
• There is a limit on how long a message can be and how many you can send in a day, generous enough that ordinary conversation never meets it.

What happens to messages

Clear conversation, in the menu at the top of a thread, hides that conversation for you and deletes nothing for the other person. It comes back if they write again.

When a boat cannot be written to

Most of the traffic on the chart has nobody behind it. That is the ordinary case rather than a fault, and AIS Fleet says which of two reasons it is.

• Nobody has claimed her. Most vessels are boats we know only from their AIS signal, and there is no reachable account to show you. A Saillogger owner who keeps their boat private is deliberately presented the same way, because a private boat is somebody who has said no. If you know her owner, Tell her owner hands you a short note to send them however you already talk: a text, an e-mail, anything. Its link carries the boat's MMSI straight into the claim wizard, and claiming a boat is free. You can also just follow her; messages become available when somebody claims her or her owner later chooses to be reachable.
• She is claimed, but you have no connection with her yet. Following her opens messages in both directions straight away, and she is told she has a new follower.

Both answers, and the steps under them, are on the website and in the app.

Fleet chat

Every fleet has a chat of its own, for its current members only, even where the fleet's map is public.

• Fleet chat needs a boat linked to your account, because fleet membership follows the boat. One-to-one messages do not.
• Only fleets your plan keeps live carry a chat, and the same is true of reaching those boats one to one: a membership beyond your plan, or a fleet its organizer's plan has paused, confers nothing in either direction. Plans and billing
• Leaving a fleet takes you out of its chat. Fleets

Stopping someone

Open your conversation with them and use Block boat from the menu in its header.

• Blocking works both ways and hides the conversation for both of you.
• It is not announced to the other side.
• Your blocks are listed under Blocked boats on the Messages screen, where you can undo them.
• Blocking does not change who follows whom, and fleet chats you share are unaffected.

Where a message lands for a Saillogger boater

Some of these conversations have a Saillogger boater on the other end. When their sharing makes them reachable, your message arrives in their Saillogger messages, under your boat's name or your published full name.

A private owner is not exposed to you, but can still choose to start a conversation from their side after learning of the follow; once started, both sides can continue it.