A yacht only gets a marker on the fleet Map if it is active, carries a valid MMSI, and has an AIS position on record. A yacht with no marker has fallen at one of those steps.
The yacht is archived
Archived yachts are excluded from the map entirely. They are also excluded from the Yachts counter above it. If the yacht should be tracked again, open Fleet → Archive and use Move to main list on its row — an action only a Management Admin sees, and one that is greyed out when the licence's yacht limit has already been reached.
The yacht has no valid MMSI
A position can only be matched to a yacht through its MMSI, which must be a nine-digit number. The MMSI field is required when a yacht is created or edited, but its contents are not checked for you — a placeholder such as "N/A" or a number of the wrong length saves happily and is then ignored by the map, and the yacht is skipped without any message of its own. Enter the nine digits only, with no spaces or other characters: the live AIS feed only picks up MMSIs stored in exactly that form.
Check the value in the MMSI column of the Fleet list. It is set when the yacht is created, in the Add new yacht window, and is shown afterwards under Identity & Registration on the General tab of Vessel Settings. To correct it, click Edit there and change the MMSI field — which needs the Vessel Settings → Edit permission.
No AIS position has been received yet
Even with a correct MMSI, a marker only appears once a position has actually arrived for that MMSI. Common reasons none has:
- The MMSI was only just added. The live AIS feed is subscribed to the fleet's MMSIs and that subscription is refreshed on a daily cycle, so a newly added or newly corrected MMSI can take up to a day before its first position lands.
- The yacht is out of receiver range. Terrestrial AIS coverage is coastal. A yacht well offshore may report nothing for long stretches and then reappear on approach to land.
- The AIS transponder is off or in silent mode. Nothing is broadcast, so nothing is received.
- The MMSI is correct but belongs to another vessel. The position shown, or the absence of one, follows the MMSI rather than the yacht name. If the ship name in a marker's bubble does not match the yacht, the MMSI on the record is wrong.
The position is there but old
A yacht that stopped broadcasting keeps its last known marker on the map. Nothing on the marker itself says the fix is stale, so always read Last update in the detail bubble before acting on a position.
How often positions refresh depends on reception and on the yacht's licence. Positions arrive continuously from the live AIS feed whenever the yacht is in coverage. Yachts whose licence includes the Map (hourly update) module can also receive an hourly top-up from a commercial AIS data provider once Nauticare has enabled it for them, so they keep a fresher position when live reception is patchy.
The map does not poll on its own while you sit on the page. Reload it, switch away and back, or leave the page and return, to pull the newest positions.