The Moorings 45.3 we chartered in 2018 and the 46.3 we've chartered for this July both show "VHF with AIS (receiving only)" but we never investigated to see if it indeed picks up AIS information.
This year we're doing a sleep aboard because of quarantine reasons so will have time to do things like check this out and load waypoints into the chartplotter.
I'm guessing that means the VHF radio includes the frequencies used for vhs, but there may be an additional seatalk module required to feed data to the chart plotter (mfd). I'll be curious to know what you find out, thanks.
EDIT: on a little further research a ais capable vhf may be all that is required. The Ray55 in our boat doesn't seem to support it. A standalone AIS receiver may require it's own antenna, so a VHF upgrade could be the best solution for me.
