An easy and efficient solution for the complicated task of managing ENCS

No. Voyager Worldwide uses the vessels existing Inmarsat C terminal and AIS to track vessel movements. No additional hardware is required.

No, because Voyager PAYS doesn’t require any special hardware, there are no set up fee.

We poll the vessel position every 60 mins using the Inmarsat C terminal and AIS positions. We record the vessel position and use it to derive which ENCs the vessel is sailing through.

AIS data is used to augment the hourly SAT-C polling to provide a more accurate track and as a backup should any SAT-C points be missed. We recommend that PAYS vessels keep AIS switched on to provide maximum tracking accuracy. Failure to do so may result in less accurate tracking and higher ENC costs being incurred.

Updates can either be downloaded using Voyager or an alternative ENC updating service. If using Voyager, users request updates on demand each week before transferring ENCs to V-DRIVE and ECDIS.

Updates can be controlled by the user in Voyager PLANNING STATION. Using Voyager PLANNING STATION/VDrive, PAYS vessels have the option to download updates for: 

• A specific route
• ADP areas
• A user defined trading area
• Entire AVCS permit

Voyager will continue to deliver updates on this basis until the preferences are changed.

SatC has a very low failure rate. Over the last 5 years, since we launched our PAYS service, we have had very few comms failures. Should position failure occur, we would use AIS as our back up while we liaised with the vessel to re-establish the connection.

If a vessel goes completely off line (if everything gets switched off in something like a dry dock situation) and we haven’t been advised that is happening, our Customer Service will contact the customer to follow up and either pause the service or get comms reinstated

Using a combination of SatC and AIS also means that vessel position is updated every 5 to 10 minutes to ensure ENC usage calculations are extremely accurate and costs are kept to a minimum.

In addition, with Voyager PAYS, shore based ship management also get online access to detailed vessel tracking data, ENCs being billed and total cost via Voyager FLEET INSIGHT so they can check the accuracy of our PAYS tracking and billing at any time. In 5 years of operating a PAYS service we have never had a customer question the accuracy of our billing.

Vessels retain access to ENCs previously purchased and still valid when they start a VOP subscription. bring their existing ENC folios into VOP.

Voyager PAYS provides worldwide access to ENCs. The weekly update for all 15,000 ENCs would be between 50 and 70MB per week. However, with Voyager vessels are able to limit the updates to a specific route or geographic area relevant and the average update file size is between 5 and 8MB.

Updates can be auto supplied to the vessel, downloaded on demand via the Voyager CLOUD or sent by email depending on the communications available on board and customer preferences.

Worldwide ENC coverage is approximately 4.5GB so it’s important to be sure that vessels have the necessary ECDIS disk space and processing power available to manage that volume of data.