Development and Operation of the Monitoring System for Anchoring of T.S. Fukae-maru

Under a strong wind the duty officer on anchor-watch most usually confirms the anchoring position manually, that by fixing the ship's position on a chart. The knowledge necessary to secure the safety of a ship at anchor is based on the experience and intuition of a seafarer, gained over many years. For example the master has to decide whether the anchor chain should be extended further, or to consider to put down another (bower) anchor. The bower anchor of the Fukaemaru is of a rare kind and has an especially high holding power. It was developed by Kobe University of Mercantile Marine and is named the KS-8 type. It is often not easy to detect accurately on a regular chart, when a ship is yawing, or the swinging room, or the threat of the anchor dragging, the reason being the limited scale. For example, one of the maximum reduced scale paper charts (published by the Japan Coast Guard) is the 'W-101A Kobe Port', which is only down to 1/15,000. The authors here have developed a navigational information display system which monitors, so far the most fully, the anchoring situation. We have installed this system aboard the training ship Fukaemaru, and it can display the anchor position with the ship's movement and the ship's motion estimation. The Development and operation of this system has been explained, and its effectiveness described in this paper