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Sea Trials Success for ENC Updates to Vessels at Sea
01 Jul 2002
The trial's success demonstrates that ChartCo can deliver ENC updates and coverage catalogue updates to ships at sea on a weekly basis. The first step towards full ENC delivery was the launch of oceanXpress at Europort last November. The same hardware used to receive paper chart corrections can now be used for automated receipt of corrections to the official Primar ENCs.
Following software development ashore, the oceanXpress service then underwent engineering sea trials with tanker operator Stolt Nielsen aboard the recently built 5,440 dwt chemical tanker Stolt Fulmar. By agreement with Primar and Stolt Nielsen, the Stolt Fulmar received weekly ENC updates at sea using the ChartCo broadcast.
Initially the interface to the ship's Kelvin Hughes ECDIS was by means of floppy disc transfer on board. However, ChartCo has developed a network interface for seamless data transfer direct into the ECDIS.
Although Kelvin Hughes is the first company to declare itself ChartCo compatible, the interface standard has also been released to other ECDIS manufacturers.
The ENC update service will be followed by support for other official navigation data types such as the recently introduced Admiralty Digital List of Lights.
MJ Information No: 17203
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