Seeing and being seen on the water is very important. Long gone are the days of there being 1 boat per hundreds of miles. Nowadays, the water can get quite busy. Our Raymarine radar sends out radiation, and it bounces off of a target, is picked up by our system, and it is then depicted on our chart plotter. It allows us to see boaters, the shore, buoys, and even weather. An accompanying system that we have is AIS (Automatic Identification System). Not all boats have this system, and in order for it to work correctly, both boats have to have an AIS system. One boat sends out it's signal via radio waves, and another boat picks up that information. It allows boaters to see the target boats speed, course, rate of turn, and most importantly a point and time to collision if there is one. There are systems that are receive only, but sending and receiving is the best way to go. Most (if not all) commercial vessels have AIS, and the cool thing is that you can log onto marinetraffic.com and see exactly where we are. 

Approx cost. $1000 for AIS. $2000 to $6000 for radar