Dole: from ARCS to Vector Charts

Reefership Marine Services, Dole Food in-house vessel management group, was responsible for the installation of C-MAP charts on Polish-built reefer vessels in 1994. The contract with C-MAP was terminated at the end of 2002 due to the fact that it was understood that the British Admiralty raster charts, ARCS, were legally accepted as an aid for navigation. This, however, is not the case. At that time it seemed like a good idea to use electronic copies of paper charts. However, Reefership Marine Services vessels experienced many problems installing raster onboard. And once the installation was complete further problems were encountered with the radar overlay. On top of that, many captains approached the management and complained about the unsatisfactory quality of charts. More specifically, the problems lay with the inability of raster charts to allow zooming functions or removal of unnecessary chart information, thus making them sometimes difficult to read. Vector charts, on the other hand, are made up of layers of nautical information, thus enabling both scaling and customising the chart display. Following the investigation of complaints, a decision was made to go back to C-MAP vector charts at the beginning of 2004. There are currently six vessels using C-MAP vector charts.