Captain Vishal: The moonlight filtered in through my cabin’s porthole; I never draw the curtains, day or night. I answered the bedside phone in one ring. “Captain”, said the Second Mate, “the Autopilot is giving an alarm and shows an error; I’ve put her on Hand-steering.”

In the next few minutes, I was poring over the Autopilot Manual in the Chart Space under the glow of the Chart table light; later, we were using a torch to read it in the wheelhouse, as the entire wheelhouse is maintained in total darkness during night watches. Tedious, to say the least!

I had the ship’s Electro-Technical Officer look at it, yet we were unable to get to the root of the problem. It was not a major enough issue to disturb the Vessel Manager based at shore at this ungodly hour; anyway, he’d have likely referred us to the manufacturers of the Autopilot equipment.

How I wish I could have connected directly to the manufacturers’ Technical Support team at any given moment…!

Enter Eleos by FrontM, a video assistance solution framework to address ship-originated support requests from shore-based distributed support teams. I had my ship’s technical managers and manufacturers collaborated in installing Eleos for my ship, I’d have been able to rectify the problem immediately with technical expertise from the shore, saved valuable time and reduced stress as well as prevented the issue from escalating any further.

At FrontM, we simplify communication, drive increased collaboration, productivity and welfare between ship and shore operations. Video communication is a game changer! Learn more about how we do that with Eleos: demo@frontm.com.