Ship's Routeing & Mandatory Reporting Systems

Question 1

What is the Ship’s Routeing Guide?

Answer 1

• Routeing schemes designed to regulate the flow of traffic
• Must be adopted by the IMO to be mandatory
• Can apply to all ships or certain classes of ships

Question 2

What are some types of ship routeing?

Answer 2

• TSS
• Deepwater routes
• Recommended routes
• Precautionary area
• Area to be avoided

Question 3

What is the Routeing Chart?

Answer 3

• Actual charts with expected weather and useful passage planning information for each month

Includes:

• Routes and distances between ports
• Load line zones
• Ocean currents
• Ice limits
• Wind roses
• Sea surface temperature
• Expected Fog
• Surface pressure

Question 4

What are the mandatory reporting systems?

Answer 4

• Monitoring systems for traffic in PSSA’s or high traffic density areas
• Improve emergency response time
• List can be found in ALRS VOL 6

Question 5

What information is usually reported to VTS?

Answer 5

1. Ships name/callsign/IMO number/MMSI number
2. Ships course, speed, destination
3. Persons onboard
4. Hazardous cargo, IMO class and quantity
5. Defects/damages/deficiencies

Question 6

Factors for Master to consider when choosing optimum route?

Answer 6

Climatic / Operational
- Currents
- Encountering fog or ice
- Delays or damage to due to adverse weather
- Type of ship, nature of cargo
- Operational tasks required on passage

Commercial
- Instructions from owners or terms of charter party
- Dist of each route
- ETA and fuel consumption
- Time saving / delay and costs of canal
- Load Line Zones

Question 7

What is Climatic Routeing?

Answer 7

• Following recommended routes according to season for a given ocean
• Shows average prevailing conditions from years of data
• Illustrated in Ocean passages for the world and routeing charts

Question 8

What to refer to when considering factors for planning ocean passage?

Answer 8

• Ocean current circulation
• Worse weather in high lats
• Better weather in middle lats (STAC)