Passage Plan
A Passage Plan is a detailed plan of a ship's intended voyage from berth to berth, prepared before departure to ensure the vessel can be navigated safely and efficiently throughout. It is a requirement of good seamanship and of SOLAS, which mandates that a passage plan cover the voyage from the berth of departure to the berth of arrival.
Planning follows four recognised stages — Appraisal, Planning, Execution and Monitoring. The plan lays out the intended route (courses and waypoints), the charts to be used, hazards and no-go areas, under-keel clearance and tidal windows, reporting points and traffic schemes, contingency options, and points requiring extra caution (pilotage, narrow channels, landfall). During the voyage the plan is monitored and the ship's progress checked against it, increasingly through ECDIS, which stores the route and alarms if the ship deviates or stands into danger. Thorough passage planning is a cornerstone of safe navigation and grounding prevention, closely tied to the bridge team, ECDIS and the watchkeeping officers who execute it. It is fundamental to conducting a voyage safely.
Most groundings trace back to a voyage that wasn't properly planned — the passage plan is the defence, mapping the whole berth-to-berth route with its hazards, clearances and contingencies before the ship sails, then monitored against ECDIS underway. Required by SOLAS and central to safe navigation, it is where a safe voyage is designed before it begins.
What are the four stages of passage planning?
Appraisal, Planning, Execution and Monitoring — gathering information, drawing up the route, sailing it, and continuously checking progress against the plan.
Is a passage plan required?
Yes — SOLAS requires a berth-to-berth passage plan for the voyage, and it is a cornerstone of safe navigation.