A voyage that ends badly rarely goes wrong at sea. It goes wrong days earlier, on the chart table, in a plan that was rushed, copied from the last ship, or never properly made at all. By the time the ground is close enough to matter, the decisions that would have kept the vessel clear should already have been taken. That is the whole purpose of passage planning: to turn a voyage of thousands of miles into a sequence of decisions made calmly in advance, so the bridge team executes a plan rather than improvises one in the dark.
Passage planning, also called voyage planning, is neither optional nor informal. SOLAS Chapter V, Regulation 34 requires the master to ensure the intended voyage is planned using appropriate charts and publications, and IMO Resolution A.893(21), the Guidelines for Voyage Planning, sets out how it should be done. It applies to every vessel regardless of size, and it covers the entire voyage from berth to berth, including the waters where a pilot is aboard. The Guidelines divide the work into four stages that follow in strict order: appraisal, planning, execution, and monitoring. Each depends on the one before it, which is why treating any single stage as a formality quietly weakens the whole chain.
Stage One: Appraisal
Appraisal is the gathering stage, and it is where the quality of everything that follows is decided. Before a single course is laid off, the master and navigating officer assemble every piece of information that bears on the voyage and build a broad picture of how it can be made safely. This is the wide-angle view of the passage, taken before any commitment to a particular line on the chart.
The material is extensive. It includes the charts and publications for the whole route, all corrected and up to date: sailing directions, lists of lights, tide tables, routeing guides, radio signal information, and the latest notices to mariners. It takes in the ship’s own characteristics, such as draught, manoeuvring behaviour, squat, and air draught, along with the cargo and the load line zones the voyage will cross. It weighs the weather and climatology, ocean currents, traffic density, routeing and reporting systems, and any areas of danger, together with the availability of suitable Electronic Navigational Chart coverage and the company’s own requirements. The Guidelines list around fifty elements in total, not all of which apply to every passage, and a large part of the skill lies in recognising which ones matter for this voyage. The output of a good appraisal is a clear indication of where the dangers lie, where it is possible to navigate safely, and which broad route options exist, from which the master settles the overall strategy. The groundwork of reading the charts themselves is covered in Reading Nautical Charts, and a structured way to work through the gathering stage is the Voyage Planning Checklist.
Stage Two: Planning
With the appraisal complete and the route chosen in outline, planning is the stage where that strategy becomes a detailed, berth-to-berth plan laid onto the charts, whether on paper or in ECDIS. This is the close-up work, the translation of a broad intention into specific courses, marks, and limits the watchkeeper can follow.
A thorough plan carries a great deal more than a track. It marks the no-go areas and the margins of safety around them, the safe water, the under-keel clearance requirement, and the tidal windows that govern when shallow stretches can be crossed. It identifies abort points and points of no return, contingency anchorages and bolt-holes for when a passage has to be broken off, and the wheel-over points and turn radii that make each alteration achievable at the planned speed. It adds the independent checks a navigator relies on to confirm position: clearing bearings and ranges, transits and leading lines, and parallel-index lines. It notes the chart-change points, the VTS and reporting positions, the pilot boarding ground, and the speed plan needed to meet a tidal gate. Because the plan is berth to berth, it includes the pilotage waters as fully as the open sea. The completed plan is approved by the master before it is used, and it must be available on the bridge at all times. On ECDIS, much of this is built and verified through the route itself, a process set out in ECDIS Route Planning Step by Step and underpinned by correctly configured safety settings, while the choice between great circle and rhumb line shapes the longer ocean legs.
Stage Three: Execution
A plan is not a document to be filed away the moment it is approved. The IMO deliberately made execution one of the four stages to stress that the plan is carried out actively, and adapted as the real world requires. This is the stage many summaries skip over, yet it is where the planning meets the conditions of the day.
Executing the plan means putting it into effect with the prevailing circumstances firmly in view: the estimated times of arrival against tidal windows, the weather and visibility, the availability of daylight at critical points, the density of traffic, the reliability of the equipment, and the condition of the ship herself. Decisions belonging to this stage include the timing needed to reach a tidal gate, the readiness of the engine and the manning of the bridge, and, in the most important cases, whether to begin the passage at all or to wait for better conditions. The plan is a living document. When special circumstances arise, the master reviews and amends it, and any change is made consistently with the Guidelines, clearly marked, and recorded so the whole bridge team is working to the same revised intention.
Stage Four: Monitoring
Once the voyage is under way, monitoring is the continuous business of confirming that the ship is where the plan says she should be, and acting promptly when she is not. It is the stage that never stops for the duration of the passage, and it is where the marks laid down during planning finally earn their place.
Sound monitoring rests on fixing the ship’s position frequently and by more than one method, then cross-checking those methods against each other so that no single system is ever trusted alone. Visual bearings, radar ranges, transits, parallel indexing, the echo sounder, and satellite position each provide a check on the others, and the prudent navigator treats a disagreement between them as a warning rather than an inconvenience. The clearing bearings, no-go areas, and abort points drawn in during planning become the working tools of this stage, and the frequency of fixing is matched to how close the dangers lie. The over-reliance on a single satellite position is one of the recurring causes of grounding, which is why the relationship between dead reckoning and GPS and the discipline of position fixing methods sit at the heart of competent watchkeeping. On a modern bridge this monitoring runs continuously against the active route, with look-ahead and alarms standing watch alongside the officer, as described in ECDIS Route Monitoring and Alarms.
Why the Four Stages Are One Process
The value of the framework lies in seeing the stages as a single chain rather than four separate tasks. Appraisal feeds planning, planning enables execution, execution is watched by monitoring, and monitoring, when it detects something the plan did not foresee, sends the master back to amend the plan. A passage planned beautifully but ignored at sea, and a passage watched closely against a plan that was never properly appraised, both fail in the same way, because a broken link breaks the chain.
Pilotage does not suspend any of this. The pilot brings local knowledge and advises on the conduct of the ship, but the bridge team continues to monitor the vessel against its own plan throughout, and the master remains responsible for her safety. This is why the plan covers the pilotage waters in full and why the four stages apply from the moment the lines come off the bollards at the departure berth to the moment they go back on at the destination. Done properly, the framework does not slow a voyage down. It front-loads the thinking so that the busiest and most dangerous moments are met with decisions already made.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the four stages of passage planning? The four stages are appraisal, planning, execution, and monitoring, set out in IMO Resolution A.893(21), the Guidelines for Voyage Planning. They follow in order, with each stage depending on the one before it.
Is passage planning a legal requirement? Yes. SOLAS Chapter V, Regulation 34 requires the master to ensure the voyage is planned using appropriate charts and publications, following the IMO Guidelines. It applies to all vessels regardless of size or type.
Does passage planning apply when a pilot is on board? Yes. The plan must cover the whole voyage from berth to berth, including pilotage waters. The presence of a pilot does not relieve the master or the officer of the watch of their duty to monitor the ship against the plan.
What is the difference between appraisal and planning? Appraisal is the gathering of all relevant information and the forming of the overall strategy for the voyage. Planning is the detailed, berth-to-berth plotting of that strategy onto the charts, complete with courses, no-go areas, margins of safety, and contingency marks.
Why is execution treated as part of passage planning? Because the plan must be carried out actively and adjusted for prevailing conditions. The IMO included execution to stress that the plan is a living document the master reviews and amends as circumstances change, not a fixed document set aside once approved.