[TXnMA]

Oztrich Boy, I think you may have turned up something very significant here!!

1. IF the ACX Crystal was in the Tokyo-inbound lane -- then the USS Fitzgerald MAY have had to cross the Tokyo-outbound lane to have been in collision position..

2. IF the lanes and course change shown on your chart correspond to the ~16:17Z course change to 70 degrees by ACX Crystal -- then the Crystal was off-charted-lane-course (60 degrees) -- by ten (10) degrees to port.

I'll see if your chart and my AIS plot matches up, and will toss it all into my vector-graphics drawing software to see what effect a 10-degree off-lane-course error by ACX Crystal would have produced.

~~~~~~~~~

This event sounds stranger, all the time...

[TXnMA]

As promised, I've been working on georeferencing Oztrich Boy's shipping lane chart to the Izu area and the AIS data plots.

When the lane chart is georeferenced to the shoreline of the Izu Peninsula and Mikomoto Shima (Island), here's what I get:

Obviously, the shipping lanes correspond neither to the AIS data nor to the shipping lanes (in darker blue) on the AIS plot.

For one thing, the shipping lane chart is not internally, dimensionally consistent: I've "ghosted in" a copy of the nautical miles scale from the chart -- against the dimension line south of Mikomoto Shima. The chart's own six (6) NM scale spans seven (7) NM on the chart!

Something ain't right !!

Just looked at the clock, and it's 5AM! I spent yesterday doing archaeology on a WWII iron ore mining and processing site -- dragging this 79-year-old carcass up & down hills and swinging a pickaxe.

I'm "tard" of futzing with this thing -- so, WYSIWYG!! Play with it as you like... I'm hitting the sack! '-)

TXnMA