New version features pre-ECDIS route validation to make the route planning process simpler plus enhanced voyage plan and Navarea Warning features.

GNS today announced the release of a new version of Voyager PLANNING STATION, delivering new tools that make its market-leading planning software even more useful and improving features bridge officers use every day.

The new Voyager PLANNING STATION version 7.4 introduces a route validation tool to provide a more streamlined route planning process as well as highlights Alert and Warning Hazards along a route to enhance vessel safety and extends the passage plan to include squat and under keel clearance calculations, ENC navigation hazards, Marpol areas and Navarea Warnings.

Today, officers using ENCs for navigation must validate each route in ECDIS and then transfer the route back to a PC in order to get any missing permits and check for ENC updates. Importantly, with the new version of Voyager PLANNING STATION the entire route planning process can be done in one place. Using Voyager PLANNING STATION, officers can plot waypoints, optimise routes, validate those routes and purchase and download the exact permits and updates required before transferring to ECDIS using GNS’s V-DRIVE data transfer tool to make end-to-end route planning simpler, more cost-effective and significantly more efficient.

“With this new release of Voyager PLANNING STATION we are removing one of the major inefficiencies associated with digital navigation and bringing greater simplicity and efficiency to the bridge at a very affordable price” said Hayley van Leeuwen, GNS’s Director Product and Marketing. “This new version also provides significant enhancements to Voyager’s PASSAGE PLAN tool to make it easier for officers to produce a compliant passage plan.”

Voyager PLANNING STATION is powered by the SEALL ECDIS kernel which has been type approved by DNV, to enable officers to perform their everyday navigation planning and compliance tasks via one intuitive software application.