OHHHHH that would TOTALLY explain the *picture* though!!!! The original incorrect picture is probably a photo of the Corvette!
Somebody whose ask I think I lost sent me this article from early February about Kola and Stoiky (and I think it mentions the tug as well near the end) transiting down through the canal in the first place, I assume this week was supposed to be the return journey. Maybe the tug moved on to work somewhere else?
If I had to hazard a guess, either Kola and Stoiky are sharing one AIS signal (I don’t think that’s a thing??), OR there’s been some sort of confusion (possibly human error) in a logging system somewhere that, when processing both of the vessels together as they passed through somewhere, ended up accidentally labelling Kola with Stoiky’s photo and hull number.
WAIT. @echo1608 I’ve had a breakthrough!!
So I’m actually inclined to think that Vessel Finder (which I’m told by people in the notes is visually super-glitchy at the best of times because of how much data it has to handle) has somehow ended up turning the AIS signal for both ships (Kola and Stoiky) into only ONE display point/readout — but it does know geographically that both of them are there. Here’s why I say that:
Here is where Kola is currently anchored, in a berth next to what looks like an empty anchor berth:
Earlier today, I noticed something that struck me as weird when I was looking at Kola’s tracking line of recent movement, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time other than “huh, glitchy”.
On vessels that are mostly sitting still or anchored (like the Ever Given lol), the tracking line that shows the last couple of hours of movement mostly moves in small overlapping circles right underneath where the vessel is.
That is uh, not what Kola’s track does:
(The red dot on the right there is me selecting a point on the track) Soooo Kola’s track basically looks like she’s teleporting lol. Jumping back and forth across that distance so quickly that there are no progress dots in between, but still keeping that registered movement speed (seen in the blue box) at 0kts.
This morning, I thought that weirdness must just be a variance/glitch in how the tracker is picked up by satellite — like how you can sometimes watch your personal dot on Google Maps move around while you’re standing still. I assumed that Kola wasn’t really moving much (listed as anchored, 0kts), the calibration of the geo-tracker was just poor and resulted in the vessel signal “jumping” back and forth between two points and creating these lines.
But then I thought about your “two vessels, one weird hybrid AIS display on our screens” thing. And I thought about it a little more. And then I turned the nautical chart overlay back on:
And OH. The other end of that super-fast back and forth and back and forth tracking pattern between two completely still states lines up DIRECTLY with the centre of the neighbouring anchorage point.
So. If I had to theorize (in a semi-informed manner, based on the evidence at hand):
I would bet that BOTH Kola and the Corvette Stoiky (aka the elusive Russian Warship 545) are present here, but for reasons inexplicable to me (and possibly it just comes down to Program Is Hella Glitchy, or a weird method of entering their data, who knows), Vessel Finder (and by the looks of it, Marine Traffic too) is using the SAME ID number (6720004) for BOTH ships, resulting in them being combined into a weird hybrid profile that VesselFinder reads from which has:
- 1 photo (of a boat I’d bet my pants is the Corvette Stoiky or a similar model)
- 1 registered name (KOLA)
- 1 set of specifications (the ones for KOLA)
- 1 little cartoon ship marker (tied to the left-side geographic signal)
- 1 vessel class name (“oil products tanker”)
- 2 possible display names (“KOLA” and “Russian Warship 545”)
- 2 colour classifications (service vessel red and tanker orange)
- 2 geolocation signals (one signal coming from that left anchor point where the ship marker sits, and signal two coming from the right anchor point where the track marks point to).
When the program is reading from the data profile, it seems to be displaying all of the things on that list that only have 1 as constants, and then for everything where there are 2 (data from BOTH vessels), it simply jumps back and forth between reading from one, then the other, and back and forth. Probably every time the map refreshes itself or something. I think Marine Traffic might be doing the exact same thing, but with a photo of Kola instead of Stoiky.
Again, this is just a theory, but its the only thing I can currently think of that explains everything we’ve seen here so far!
Either through a glitch in the system, or an error in human entry, or a deliberate choice to register them under a combined profile with the idea they are not to be separated (perhaps in some misguided attempt to simplify registration), I think what we are seeing is a pair of ships, showing up as one single ship profile which has two names, two geolocations, and two class designations, and is flipping back and forth between those data sources based on whichever it picks up.
tl;dr: My new running theory is we’re seeing two ships which travel together, with two names, two geolocation signals, two classifications, grouped under one (1) profile and ID number, resulting in the program inconsistently displaying the duplicate values as it tries to represent two different vessels with a single visual datapoint and a single profile page.
And, lol, when I went back to look again and check something between getting those first couple screenshots, guess who’s back to the old tricks again... :)
God I’ve gotten so much serotonin out of this problem-solving challenge, along with the stress of a trillion notifications. But this has been..... fun??
In Conclusion: