[LEFT]A friend emailed me today asking what software most people use to do their vayage planning. Last time I did a major new Voyage Plan I used Waypoint For Windows but there must be a better solution.
Any ideas for him?
[/LEFT]
Don’t a lot of ships just use their ECDIS software now? The last ship I was on was paperless, so we didn’t plot anything, and the voyage planning (waypoints, courses, etc.) was all done on the ECDIS.
Good point… believe it or not, I’ve never sailed on a ship equiped with ECDIS.
Hi John,
I’ve done a couple with the TRANSAS ECDIS - it’s pretty good.
MTSKIER
Our ECDIS was Kelvin Hughes…it was alright - I like the TRANSAS system better - easier to use, more user friendly, better controls with the TRANSAS.
Hello to all!
Why not try BLM-Shipping, it is really a free professional voyage planning software!
Ø Generate voyage route automatically, and then edit route using position book. Finally, generate voyage plan.
Ø Automatically calculate voyage route including way points, join points, routing points etc.
Ø Calculate ETA, ETD and steaming time based on speed, port time etc. Inputs, or calculate speed, port time and steaming time based on ETA and/or ETD inputs.
Ø Change routing point on the e-map.
Ø Use position book to insert/modify/delete way points on voyage route, in the same time edit ETA, ETD, Speed, Great circle line / rhumb-line of a way point.
Ø Use bunker manager to generate bunker plan of a voyage.
Ø View and export voyage plan report as Excel file.
Download link: http://www.boloomo.com/common/download.action
[QUOTE=john;11059]Good point… believe it or not, I’ve never sailed on a ship equiped with ECDIS.[/QUOTE]
I sailed with sextant for my first 24 years at sea until 1995. But, John you look so young in the picture and never used Ecdis.
Can’t believe it. Now even Seiner’s using it.
Yeah, for Voy planning Ecdis is the best. I liked Nobeltec.
[QUOTE=boloomo;37645]Hello to all!
Why not try BLM-Shipping, it is really a free professional voyage planning software!
Download link: http://www.boloomo.com/common/download.action[/QUOTE]
Hi everyone, did anybody downloaded and tested this software?
does it work?
ECDIS is the default now with the main two choices being TRANSAS and Furuno. Personally I am more familiar with Furuno. IRT W4W, despite being a old program is still my go to planning tool bar none. A seperate printout of wayoints, the auxiliary features of printing out the waypoints to intersect lat or long with exact positions as a double check on ECDIS or if using both ECDIS and paper as I was forced to do on the ship I sailed on over 9 years as a MSC CO-CO was required to have both is invaluable. Using W4W features to rapidly find the best limiting latitude in composite GC sailings is fast and efficient. By the way, what ever happened to the genius who developed W4W. Almost became an urban legend. Tried contacting him years ago, always an excuse, that he was offshore but would soon be back and update the program to run on new program versions besdides XP. No one ever heard back. Some ships bought old XP laptops from ebay just to run the W4W.