S4 Provide Troubleshooting for Forth Umpire on the Medway

On 14th September 2020, S4 provided day visit troubleshooting support to their client Briggs Port & Marine for their multicat the Forth Umpire, stationed at London Medway Port for Peel Ports support activities (Sheerness, Isle of Sheppey).

The Forth Umpire, a 16m workboat was fitted with a basic Hemisphere GPS Compass positioning system (with SBAS Differential) and old Version 3 Tower Navigation software suite (installed on an old ruggedised Panasonic laptop) with background dxf of the Medway Ports full facilities/outline. The full suite had been recently swapped from another Briggs fleet vessel back to the Umpire and the crew were experiencing teething problems in its setup and with positioning/heading errors. The vessel was due to undertake Medway port and channel navigation aids checks and maintenance program works.

During the day visit, the system was troubleshooted, reconfigured for correct setup, offset checked, position & heading error checked in the dock basin and the crew advised on setup for future potential swapping to other fleet vessels – a mini report and DGPS quick guide was also provided for future reference.