#Smartphone - A yacht managed to avoid collision with a container ship off the coast of South Africa recently - thanks to a smartphone app.
As Yachting Monthly reports, Ian Engelbrecht and crew Ibolya Palko were delivering a catamaran from Cape Town to Durban when they were trapped in thick fog not far the coastline.
When their primary AIS system stopped working, Engelbrecht turned on a smartphone app called Boat Beacon as a way to alert them to any other ships in the vicinity.
The app did its job, alerting the pair to a container vessel travelling in the opposite direction, though they were unsure of what corrective action to take due to the poor visibility and not knowing the closest point of approach (CPA).
Despite this, collision was averted - and the incident has prompted the app developers to add a CPA bearing feature to their product.
Yachting Monthly has more on the story HERE.
