Passage Planning

Checking passage plans on small screens

Planning, due to the size of the screen, an over view of the whole passage is very hard to see and this causes problems when checking passages, explaining to navigators where I want to go etc, if the range is increased on the ECDIS it is very hard to see small items of information, particularly soundings near to the course line. This has led to what could be called near misses in the passage planning stage. The only way to check the passage plan effectively is to decrease the range to say 6 miles and then keep moving the screen along over the course. Time spent in this when on a relatively short passage of say 400 miles is rather time consuming and not a very effective use of time. Also with short turnarounds in port it can at times be an issue.