AWT Weather Routing/Routeing: Applied Weather Technology

Recognizing Best Practices at Sea - Mercy Ships Protects Sensitive Medical Equipment on Board Hospital Ships with Help from AWT

by Dave Callicott

It's been eight years since Mercy Ships, the organization world-famous for using its hospital ships to deliver free health care services to the poor, first approached AWT, searching for a way to stay better advised of the weather particularly during hurricane season. Mercy Ships asked AWT if we would provide our BonVoyage (BVS) marine voyage optimization system to help support the organization's humanitarian cause, and we were honored to comply.

We're even more gratified that Mercy Ships has found BVS to be so beneficial that its captains and crew continue to use the system today to help ensure safety and avoid encounters with inclement weather that could damage sensitive medical equipment on board its hospital ships while en route between destinations. Mercy Ships also uses AWT to keep tabs on the weather while in port and alert doctors conducting surgeries on board to the potential for motion that could interfere with their operations.

We recently caught up with Africa Mercy's Captain Tim Tretheway, who used the latest version of BVS in February 2009 to help navigate the safest and most fuel-efficient course for the Africa Mercy, the world's largest non-governmental hospital ship, to the ship's current assignment in Benin, West Africa.

Captain Tretheway talked with us about how BVS helps Mercy Ships, and here are some highlights of what he had to say:

"We use BVS to find the routes with the most moderate conditions and then we'll take those routes. It's simple to check conditions ahead. You flip on the flat screen with BVS and it's easy to get a complete, real time picture of the weather by simply moving the mouse over a specific location. In addition to wind, pressure and sea conditions, we highly value the NCOM current data. In my experience, we have had fewer problems due to inclement weather because there has been more and better weather information available to us thanks to AWT."

"On our recent voyage last month to Benin, West Africa, we used BVS to look at conditions that would have an effect on our ETA, and planned our departure accordingly. We utilized BVS daily to keep on schedule and make a timely arrival. An on-time arrival was never more important than when we arrived and saw 4000 people waiting for us in need of medical treatment."

"Because BVS clearly showed us we had favorable conditions en route to Benin, it allowed us to adjust our engine speed for maximum safety and fuel economy for the voyage."

"On the previous voyage we had somewhat more adverse conditions, which we also had displayed by BVS. At that time we had to put two additional engines on line to make our ETA in the Canary Islands, where we were heading for re-supply and refit. BVS gave us information to make a timely decision about putting the additional engines on line."

"Also, we want to take the safest route possible to protect our sensitive medical equipment. We're loaded with CT scanners and X-ray machines that are not designed for being bounced around. Before we had the BVS system, one of our big dental lamps came loose from its lashings and did a self-destruct," said Captain Tretheway.

We also spoke with Jon Fadely, current Marine Operations Director and former Mercy Ships Captain who used BVS for several years aboard the now retired Caribbean Mercy. He noted that in addition to BVS's clear graphical representation of what to expect on-route, another big advantage of BVS is that data comes to the ship independent from the Internet.

"BVS has a wonderful way of turning words into pictures, and the data comes to us independent from the Internet, which is important because Internet communications on board ships can be unreliable and expensive," said Captain Fadely. "Getting near real- time weather data with a simple email from AWT is much more cost-effective than getting online streaming Internet for a mobile platform like a ship. Also, I remain concerned with having too much dependence on any one system of communication. With email, we usually have a couple options for providing captains and crew with messages."

Here at AWT, we would like to extend our thanks to Mercy Ships for taking time to share with us the details about how they're benefiting from BVS, but more importantly, we want to say "thank you" for all that you do to improve and save so many lives.