USCG Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) Tour

TMCA will be treated to a fascinating and educational tour of the US Coast Guard Vessel Traffic Service facilities on the morning of September 16. At the VTS center more than 450+ ship and tow movements per day operating in the Vessel Traffic Service Area (VTSA) are tracked using the most sophisticated up-to-date tracking systems in the world! We will see how VTS personnel are able to view all HSC traffic with AIS, radar, and video cameras at various locations up and down the length of the channel. Come join in and learn about how all the HSC traffic gets around without hitting anything or each other! (usually!)

The location of the Vessel Traffic Service is at the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Houston/Galveston Headquarters at Ellington. Due to security regulations in place at this facility, all participants in this event MUST be US citizens and all participants MUST be prepared to show a valid driver’s license at the facility guard gate. (Note: To expedite entry through the guard gate I would recommend some car-pooling if possible, but again, all passengers MUST have their license with them!)

Details on how to get to there are provided below. The event will begin at 10:00am, but please arrive at the facility no later than 9:45am! A VTS officer will meet us in the lobby and then take us upstairs and show a video giving us a general introduction to the facility, its history, etc. Tours of the actual control room will follow. Due to the size of the control room, and depending upon the number of people participating, we may have to divide ourselves into smaller groups for this part of the tour. (The event will conclude around noon.)

The VTS center is manned 24/7/365 by both CG and civilian personnel, and it is tremendously
fascinating to stand in that room and watch and listen to them do their very serious work! And for those who may not know this, you can listen to VTS at any time as they talk to ships and tows on VHF channels 11 and 12. And sometimes while out on the water it is not a bad idea, especially if you do not have AIS capability on your boat, to monitor these channels in order to know what may be coming at you, or…., sneaking up behind you! (The HSC is divided into sectors and those vessels located between the Galveston sea buoy and light 34 use VHF channel 12 for their communications, and then between lights 34 and 122 all vessels use VHF channel 11.)

There have even been instances that I can relate where TMCA members (including myself in one case) have called VTS for some help while navigating in, or crossing, the HSC, especially during periods of very limited visibility. Even though recreational vessels are not required to check into the system, VTS is always there to help us all navigate safely on our waterways.

Those of you who will cruising to downtown Houston on the mid-October Allen’s Landing Cruise might be especially interested in this VTS tour since, for your two passages through the Port of Houston Security Zone, the TMCA flotilla is always checked into the system. Flotilla progress is closely tracked and the lead vessel is always in VHF communication with the VTS center throughout the passages. So this is a chance for you to see what that all looks like on their very sophisticated monitoring systems, radar, and cameras.

It has been quite a few years since I last organized this tour, and photos from one previous event can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/15251435@N08/albums/72157673872117185

Registration will be on the website, but for us to meet USCG security requirements, I am going to need for you to SEPARATELY email me your list of participants who will be in your car, providing ALL participant names in the same format in which they appear on your driver’s license! Since a final list of participants needs to be turned in to the VTS a week ahead of time, registration for this event will close on September 9^th. The tour is limited to 45 people so please sign up as soon as possible so that I can coordinate plans with our host.

Philip Kropf

s/v Silhouette

713-598-6454
pkropf@flash.net

Directions: The address of the facility is 13411 Hilliard St., Houston 77034. It may however be the case that your GPS does not show this address properly and so I am providing a Google Maps link on how to get there from Seabrook. It is about 12.5 miles from Seabrook and the link to this route can be accessed by clicking here.