The one area that ECDIS did not cover in details is the
How to plot navigational
warnings on ECDIS (the right
way) ?
Written by Capt Rajeev Jassal on June 9, 2016
1998 was the year when ECDIS got its first attention in
a circular of Maritime safety committee of the IMO. But the
mandatory requirement to carry ECDIS onboard ships
commenced 2012 onwards.  Quit late, I would say but
nevertheless an important decision.
And suddenly everyone was talking about ECDIS.
Companies started drawing plans for implementation. Seafarers
rushed to complete the general ECDIS course. All the way the
talk was about ECDIS.
Initially most of us thought that we can learn each aspect of
ECDIS through ECDIS course. But ask any seafarer if they were
satisfied with ECDIS course, I am willing to bet that answer
would be NO.
correction of ENCs. For example, the word “AIO” did not appear
even once during the ECDIS training.
Another issue with ECDIS was that most of us thought ECDIS
would reduce some of the work for ship staff. We were sure
that now the correction would mean a simple click. Some of us
went further thinking that correction will all be online and we
dont even need a single click.
The fairytale thinking ended when we started using ECDIS.
There was more to just a single click. And more and more ships
are getting detained due to lack of knowledge of operating
ECDIS.
This post will try to fill that gap. We will discuss how we should
correct the ENCs for navigational warnings.
Which Nav warnings to plot on ENCs
We all know how to deal with nav warnings on paper charts.
While the principle of handling the nav warnings remains the
same, plotting the nav warnings on ENCs is somewhat different.
The first thing that we need to address is which nav area
warnings we need to plot on ECDIS ?
On paper charts it is different matter all together. Oil majors
expects us to plot nav warnings on the voyage charts even if
the nav warning is 200 miles away from our planned course.
But on ECDIS all the ENCs are seamless. We dont change the
chart manually like we do for paper chart. So how do we
decide, which nav warning we need to plot.
Well we dont plot the nav warnings just to keep PSC or oil
major inspectors happy. We plot the nav warnings to ensure
that vessel is always sailing in safe areas.
Keeping this outcome in mind, we should decide upon a
maximum distance from our planned course below which any
nav warning need to plotted.
In fact, I strongly believe that company should set this distance
as guidelines in Navigation guidelines for plotting nav warnings
on ECDIS.
I prefer distance of 100 NM. Any nav warning within 100 NM of
our planned route should be plotted.
You can set your own reference distance. But you should be
able to convince everyone that in case the route is changed for
any reason, you will be able to get and plot the nav area
warning before reaching that area.
But you should not be very rigid with the set distance. For
example you should consider plotting the nav warnings like
“Man overboard” even if it is more than 100NM from your
planned course.
Types of Nav warnings
With lot of brainstorming, and after going through lot of actual
nav warnings, I could categorize the nav warning in
four sections
1) A single point Nav warnings.
These are the nav warning requiring to plot on a single
position. Nav warning with information of a wreck, a buoy,
platform etc are few of the examples.
2) Nav warnings over an area
These are the nav warnings that affects an area on the
chart. Firing practices, Survey operation in an area are few of
the examples.
3) Nav warnings along a line
These are the warnings which affects along a single ot multiple
lines. For example, laying of submarine cable.
4) Informational Nav warnings 
These are the nav warnings with just some information. Man
overboard or a missing buoy are few of the examples.
I hope you would understand that not all the nav warnings can
fall under these four categories. But those Nav warnings can be
dealt with the way at least one of these four Nav warnings are
dealt.
Lets see how these warnings can be plotted on ECDIS. We
would plot this on JRC ECDIS but process will be similar on
other equipments as well.
Plotting a Nav warning on ENC
We have to take different approach of plotting the different type
of Nav warning on ENCs. This is because of three things we
need to keep in mind when plotting anything on ENC
We have to try to not clutter the ENC.
The information should be readily available and should not
require too many clicks by the OOW to view nav warning.
 The information should be clear on all the ENC scales the nav
warning is applicable.

Keeping these things in mind, I took each type of nav warning

and plotted on ECDIS. Lets see how these should be plotted

For plotting anything on ENC we need to use manual update

option and not user map. User map is to be used for passage
planning like drawing parallel indexing etc.

1) A Single point Nav warning

As I said these are the warnings plotted on a single position

(point). The nav warning I have taken as an example is the
actual nav warning for area 8. Below is the actual warning.

Now to plot the mooring buoy, we can either

right click any where and choose “Enter Lat/Lon” or

Right click anywhere on the ENC and choose property or

Lets plot it on JRC ECDIS.
Go to chart > Manual update > Click on start > click anywhere
on the ENC you wish to plot this nav warning. It will give a
message that ENC has been selected.
just left click anywhere on the ENC. This will plot the buoy
and then right click on the buoy and choose ‘Enter Lat/Long”
or “property”.
I prefer the 2nd option because whatever option we choose we
have to go to property option to enter other details.

Next we choose the mooring buoy option from the left menu.
The preview of the symbol will be visible on the bottom left
corner for the symbol we select.
When in “property” option, enter the Lat/Long of the buoy as
given in nav warning. Choose the minimum and maximum
scale. Enter the comments like in this warning we can enter
“Nav 031/16 Moored buoy AD04 Deployed by NIOT”. The
comment we enter here will not be visible on the ENC. This will
be visible when we go to other information of the buoy.
Choosing a minimum and maximum scale is important.
Whatever values you set, the nav warning will be visible on
between those scales only. You should set the minimum scale
as the minimum scale ENC available for the voyage. For the
maximum scale, you should use your professional judgement.
For example, for dangerous wrecks you may want to show
it over wide range of scale. A non-dangerous wreck can be
shown only on large scale and 2-3 scale over it.
Choose the max/Min scale same as what was entered for the
buoy. In the text write the nav warning number like “Nav
031/16” or “NW 031/16”. In the comment you can write
short description of nav warning, though it is not necessary.
Choose the font color and size and click OK.

Another example. A buoy in mid sea can be show over wide

range of scales. We may show a buoy inside a channel only on
large scale.

So now we have plotted the buoy. Now we need to write nav

warning number near to the buoy. There are two way we can
do that.

By adding a text near to the buoy or

By adding an information mark near to the buoy

If you wish to change the font size/color, right click and choose
For adding a text (Nav warning number) near to the buoy, go property and click on the text. The same location/Attribute
to text and click near to the buoy. The Location/Attributes window will open again and you can change the data.
window will pop up
Once done, Click the Save tab on the top bar. Once the it is
saved, you cannot edit the nav warning. if you need to edit it,
you need to delete the nav warning and then plot again.

So you have now plotted this Nav warning on ECDIS.

Nav warning 2: Nav warning over an area

Now lets plot an actual nav warning which is effective over an

area. Below is an example of such type nav warning

Keep on entering all the positions and then at last enter the
first position again to have the ends meet. To finish entering
the position of the area, click on “property” on the top bar. Now
you can see the warning area plotted on the ENC.

To plot this, again follow same procedure to choose the cell on

which to plot the warning. Click start and this time choose
“warning area” under “area tab” from the options in the left
menu bar. Right click anywhere on the ENC and enter the first
position of the area to plot.

Now we need to add information as to what activities are going

on in this area. To do that, right click > choose Property > click
anywhere in the area. This will show the Location/Attribute pop
up. Enter all the information, choose min/Max scale. Choose
transparency as 75% so that you are able to see the ENC
information below warning area clearly. And finally write the These type of warnings mostly include cable laying along a line.
information about the activities in this area in the comment and Below is one such example. Lets plot it.
click OK.

Again first go to manual update section by Chart > Manual

update > start > Select ENC

 Now the nav warning has been plotted and we need to do last Now from the chart symbol option on the left choose cable/pipe
thing which we have to do for all nav warnings plotted on under Line section.
ECDIS. That is writing the nav warning number so that the
source of this manual update is easily identified. So go ahead
and write the text “NW 329/16” as we did for the previous
warning.

Right click anywhere in the chart and enter first position of the
pipeline.

Right click anywhere in the chart and enter first position of the
pipeline. Keep on entering all the positions of the nav warnings
Nav warning 3: Warning along a line
and then click on property on top menu to finish entering the
positions.
Now again we need to write the description of the activity in
the nav warning. Right click and choose “Property” and click
anywhere on the plotted cable. Choose Min/Max scale and enter
the nav warning description in the comment.
Now you need to enter the nav warning number as text near to
the cable so that we know this is plotted as a nav warning
update. This will help in finding the nav warning when we have
to delete this at later stage (when nav warning is cancelled).
Go ahead and write the text as we did earlier. To finish, just
click the Save tab on the top bar.
Nav warning # 4: Warning with just information
These are the Nav warnings containing just information. For
example, a buoy missing or Man overboard. Below is an
example of such nav warning where as a buoy has been
temporarily removed.
We can either place a “information” sign near to the buoy and
write the information in that or we can write the text near to
the buoy. I prefer writing the text near to the buoy because
this way information is easily available to the navigators.
So to plot this warning, we just write the text adjacent to the
buoy.
While plotting these type of navigational warnings, it is
important that you keep in mind the level of urgency in the nav
warning. Depending on the level of urgency, you can choose
the font size and/or color of the text.

For example for a nav warning with an information of “Man

Overboard” need to be with bigger font and prominent color.

 Handling Nav warnings on ECDIS

Handling Nav warnings on ECDIS is no different than handling

nav warnings on paper charts. But the main principle of nav
I would even recommend the use of exclamation marks to draw warnings on ECDIS and paper charts is the same. And that is to
the attention of navigator for the important warnings like this. have a system where no nav warning is missed and no
cancelled nav warnings is on chart.

On nav warning print out we write the chart number on which

this nav warning is plotted. Same way we need to write the
ENC cell number on which the nav warning is plotted.

On paper chart, for the plotted nav warning we write the nav
warning number at the bottom of the chart. There is no bottom
of the chart in ENC. So we need to have a log where we can
write the warning number against the ENC on which it has been
plotted.

The log could look something like this.

 0
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In fact we should have similar kind of log for navtex warnings FOLLOW US TODAY ON
and T&P notices plotted on ECDIS as well. After deleting a OUR SOCIAL NETWORK
warning on ECDIS we need to update this log.

Conclusion

We all know how important navigational warnings are. These

are the informations which affects our voyage NOW. These are
the most current informations and need to be taken very
seriously.

While the digital world has touched the universe, it is irony that
we still need to plot the nav warning manually. There is some
work going on in digitisation of these nav warnings but till that
time we need to know how to plot nav warnings on ECDIS.

But lack of user oriented information on handling these

warnings on ECDIS is a serious concern. This concern can only
be dealt with logical thinking while setting up procedures of
handling nav warnings on ECDIS.

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 that we dont need it. We have to be sure that we have choosen the
correct usermap before making the correction itself and to be careful
not to merge some usermaps by mistake.
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About Capt Rajeev

Jassal Rajeev Jassal  6 years before
Hi Sava.. The problem with User map is that it only has the
Capt. Rajeev Jassal has sailed for options to draw figures like Line, circle, rectangle etc and not
over 24 years mainly on crude oil, the chart symbols like buoy, submarine cable. So if you need
to draw submarine cable, you won't be able to do that with
product and chemical tankers. He
user Map. Regarding your 2nd query, We need to cancel a
holds MBA in shipping & Logistics navarea warning when one is cancelled and not when it is
degree from London. He has done included as permanent correction. We need to have a log of
what all navarea warnings we have plotted and on receiving
extensive research on quantitatively
the weekly in force list, we need to delete the one that are
measuring Safety culture onboard cancelled in that week.
and safety climate ashore which he
believes is the most important
element for safer shipping.

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18 Comments

Sava Mitradzhiev  6 years before

Nicely done, very helpfull article expecially for JRC users. Although I
would like to share my oppinion regarding this manual correction vs
the user map option. First of all editing over the cell itself is not very
applicable for noobs. Isn't it easier to create several user maps for the
different navareas and to safely apply corrections there. Having in
mind that JRC have no limit for overlapping of user maps and for the
amuount of user maps that you can create. Let us say that you have 2
inmarsat C on board we can monitor the next navarea lets say 1 day
before and we can be ready in advance for the future navigational
conditions. Another consideration that I have is what will happen if we
maka a manual correction and we dont erase it and after some time
we get the weekly update? If tye correction is already included in the
update as a permanent one, what will happen with the manual one
that we made already? I am not so advanced so if somebody can
answer me I would appreciate it. Using user map we can avoid that.
We can just erase the whole usermap with everthing in it assuming