THROW AWAY THE CHARTS? Your thoughts on ECDIS

For the professional mariner, ECDIS with the attending radar and AIS overlays is the greatest thing since sliced bread! It make day or night navigation through areas where visual aids are marginal and traffic is heavy easy because it provides real-time information on vessel position, course, speed, influence of environmental factors, traffic information, etc.
That said, ECDIS is a “magic box” which at some point in one’s career will fail when it is needed the most. While ECDIS is a tremendous TOOL, it is not the be all to end all of navigation. The ultimate back-up is the paper chart, the dividers, the triangles and the myriad of other tools used in non-electronic navigation. These “manual” methods are the result of centuries in development. In my opinion, while I love my ECDIS, my watch mates still practice their skills in celestial navigation and I still insist on visual plots down on a chart - even if it is only recording where the ship WAS. Navigation skills is an art that is lost without practice.

USCG: What happened
Maser: we ran aground
USCG: How?
Master: We lost the plant
USCG: Oh, what happened leading up to the grounding, where are yolur charts?
Master: We lost the plant, how the hell should I know?

I’m with Anchorman on this one. Maintaining an accurate position on a paper chart requires many more steps be performed correctly by a human then does an electronic system hence the greater chance of error. Another factor is the time required to maintain a plot. This is a problem when the workload starts to increase. As for the problem of losing power, that ship sailed a long time ago, literally.

I here your argument, and agree with you for the most part however if you look at ship groundings within the industry you will find more accidents today when ships are in transit within pilotage waters than in yesteryear. there are some bad habits that have formed using today’s technology.
My opinion having seen the electronic evolution from the early 60’s to present is that too many of today’s would be navigators follow the yellow brick road, do not use there radar properly and do not look out the window for what is out there. In many instantane there is simply not the same effort put into preparing for voyages when utilizing electronic charting programs as with paper charts. many mates feel they have done their job by putting track lines down. This is egregous as far as i’m concerned.
We as master/mates need to recognize these bad habits and be better teachers.
Dave

If there were groundings, like in open ocean, near the Mariana Trench possibly, I think I would have to blame the Chief Engineer for trying to change out the sea chest, not the ECDIS.

The Art of Dredging has a link to an article “Electronic Charts May Prevent One in Three Groundings”

I give full support to the use of ecdis systems and I love them. They are great tools and if manned properly can greatly increase safe navigation. From a piloting perspective, however, I have observed a number of new generation Mate/pilots (On the Great Lakes every Mate is a FCP, well supposed to be) piloting the rivers by keeping the little boat on the line, rather than head up and looking out the front window. The art of piloting: checking head swing against bearings on terrestrial objects, landmarks for turning, etc. are losing out to watching the computer. Sad, and dangerous. One has to get the big picture by LOOKING out the window, not the screen. There is a balance but situational awareness is critical especially in pilotage waters.

afraid that some of the newer generation comes to the wheelhouse to play “pac-man”!!!

More like “Track Man”.

As long as the person in the wheelhouse includes the windows as one of the instruments they check they can keep themselves out of trouble, but I always felt safer having a paper plot as a backup.

Regards

Copied


dossier surendettement

I agree, but give these guys any tool and they will misuse it. I’ve watched the mate, in SE force-8 winds, read the anemometer, punch the numbers into the computer, then very carefully record in the log that the winds are N’ly at force 3. This is in broad day light, the ship heeling over in the wind and with half a dozen degrees of leeway on.

I think the mate on watch should have the best tools available. They just have to be corrected when they misuse them. Of course some mates are easier to teach then others.

I have always much preferred to work with paper charts when passage planning.
S.

[QUOTE=Sharp21;19944]I have always much preferred to work with paper charts when passage planning.
S.[/QUOTE]

The planning part of ECDIS is the strength of the system.

You can easily update the charts, lay out the passage, even utilizing composite sailing techniques, figure fuel burn, tides and currents, check the database for any perceived dangers by route checking, then you can print out the route.

You can transfer the entire route to paper and still be finished before the guy that started with paper, and you just did it twice.

The achilles heel of ECDIS is certainly not during the planning phase.

I was XO on a submarine that converted from paper charts to ECDIS-N. My thoughts:

  1. VERY hard to do voyage planning on ECDIS-N, mostly because of SIZE and RESOLUTION of the monitors (especially the laptop used for “voyage planning.”) It’s hard to see and read chart features and soundings. Our work-around was to plug the laptop into a large screen TV and set the resolution to the highest possible. We also would sometimes break out a small-scale paper chart, draw the voyage on that, and then use that to maintain perspective while doing the detail work on the laptop or one of the ECDIS-N displays in the control room.

  2. Managing what overlays and what chart features to turn on/off is key to keeping your ECDIS system operating smoothly and quickly. The more graphics intensive stuff you turn on, the slower ECDIS runs. So there’s some art in what you need to turn on and what you can leave off and call up as needed. (I’d recommend that SOUNDINGs always stay on :slight_smile: )

  3. Kids these days. I second all the above comments about people keeping their head on the moving plot instead of out the window where it should be. The systems can easily lull one into a false sense of security. The prudent mariner cross-checks fixes, so you have to take visuals (oor RADAR or something else) and compare to GPS and make sure GPS is working well. And it takes constant care and feeding to keep 20-something year-old deck officers to keep their eye on NAVAIDS, respect danger bearings, and develop their seaman’s eye instead of relying on the ECDIS.

  4. Big positive: chart updates. Wow. As long as you have a formal process for doing the downloads and then add anything manually that results from NOTAMs, etc… then this saves you all kinds of time. But again, that time shouldn’t be spent on the beach. It should be spent on improving your voyage plan. The computer does so much for you now that you ideally spend a lot more time NAVIGATING instead of PLOTTING.

Hope this helps!!

[I]Subguy,[/I]

[I]“I’d recommend that SOUNDINGs always stay on”[/I]
Said like a true Submariner!

[I]“But again, that time shouldn’t be spent on the beach.”[/I]
Said like a true XO!
:smiley:

With no paper charts, what’s the piloting party look like? How about the duties of the QMOW u/w?

Agree, on all good points mentioned above. A great nav tool / aid for manouvering, fog, etc… especially when integrated wit AIS and ARPA.

Bad thingNos:
Not resistant to liquids i.e. coffee spillage on keyboard, or other parts.
Not resistant to viruses. IT policy must be observed. Class regs also, which state that ECDIS equipment must be separate from any other network o/b.
Resistance to electro-shocks is questionable, especially during thunderstorms.
Junior off’s non resistant - not a foolproof system when a junior officer devlops too much dependency on the system and stops looking ahead,
etc…

Conclusion: great aid to nav but can not be used without paper charts. The simple thruth is - it is just a piece of equipment that can break down. Paper chart can not.

[quote=jolly;20102]
Conclusion: great aid to nav but can not be used without paper charts. The simple thruth is - it is just a piece of equipment that can break down. Paper chart can not.[/quote]

Comparing the reliability of a paper chart alone to a ECDIS as a whole is not a valid comparison. The paper chart it is just one element in a system used to by the watch officer. Obtaining data and maintaining a plot on a paper chart requires a certain amount of time, skill and effort, the resulting plot is sometimes not accurate or up to date. This has to be taken into account as well.The pertinent question is, taken as a whole, which system more reliably provides situational awareness?

The fact that ships equipped with ECDIS have fewer groundings indicates that watch officers with ECDIS can more reliably maintain situational awareness then those without.

[quote=Kennebec Captain;20166]Comparing the reliability of a paper chart alone to a ECDIS as a whole is not a valid comparison. The paper chart it is just one element in a system used to by the watch officer. Obtaining data and maintaining a plot on a paper chart requires a certain amount of time, skill and effort, the resulting plot is sometimes not accurate or up to date. This has to be taken into account as well.The pertinent question is, taken as a whole, which system more reliably provides situational awareness?

The fact that ships equipped with ECDIS have fewer groundings indicates that watch officers with ECDIS can more reliably maintain situational awareness then those without.[/quote]

I agree. Above mentioned is a fact. But it should be said “…ships equipped with WORKING & OPERATIONAL ECDIS… have fewer groundings indicates that…”

The problem is following:
OOW gets used to ECDIS - so far, so good. But what when ECDIS breaks down, and officer find himself in new situation to which he is not used?
In situataion of: fog, approach to Shanghai, fishing boats, shallow waters, bouyed channel, vsl limited by draft, no pilot on board, etc… And in unexepcted moment ECDIS freezes? (I had such experience with vesl draft 12 mtrs…)

There was a story (i don’t know if it’s a joke) that american jet pilots in Vietnam war in the start suffered heavy losses in the air.
The reason: too many hours of training spent on flight simulator. They got used to have three spare lifes, just like on simulator…simply

I am afraid that getting used to ECDIS too much, could lead to serious accident, once when the lightning strikes and burnes the ecdis, in such situation you mast be ready to use what ever nav aid is on hand.
Paper chart can not break down.

I work for One of the major cruise companies and we were full ECDIS. it took some getting used to, but saves a large amounts of time in the long run! Our company did ECDIS the right way, by buying the largest screens avalible. with a IBS the screen also doubled as the radar,dp, auto pilot ect…

after working on a FULL ECDIS ships its hard to go back to paper. but it is nice to see the big picture layed out on the chart table!

[quote=spinny02;20234]
after working on a FULL ECDIS ships its hard to go back to paper. but it is nice to see the big picture layed out on the chart table![/quote]

That is exactly the point!