The Non-Negotiable Checklist Every Master Should Run Before Every Voyage

SOLAS Chapter V, Regulation 34 requires a voyage and passage plan before every voyage — full stop, regardless of how many times the ship has run that exact route before. "We've done this run a hundred times" is precisely the complacency trap this requirement exists to close, and it's worth naming directly rather than treating the regulation as a box to tick.

The Core Checklist Spine

A genuine pre-departure review covers: passage plan appraisal and execution against current conditions, not last voyage's plan reused; stability and loading condition confirmed against the actual departure condition; crew fitness for duty and rest hours under MLC, not assumed compliant; weather routing checked against the latest forecast, not the forecast from planning two days ago; a deliberate reminder of the Master's overriding authority under the ISM Code; and communications/reporting setup confirmed working before, not after, departure.

Why Familiar Routes Are the Actual Risk Factor

Passage-planning failures cluster disproportionately on familiar routes, not unfamiliar ones — precisely because familiarity is where the checklist gets rushed or skipped mentally, even when it's still nominally completed on paper. The regulation doesn't distinguish between a first-time passage and the two-hundredth identical one, and neither should the discipline applied to it.

A Better Way to Test This Than Flat Recall

Rather than asking crews to list the items on a pre-departure checklist, a more useful orals or knowledge-check format poses a scenario — a Master who skipped or rushed one specific step — and asks what they missed and what it cost. That framing tests judgement, not memorisation, and it's a better fit for how this actually goes wrong in practice.

Test Your Knowledge

Think you've got this covered? Put it to the test in Crew Connect's free Knowledge Checker — try a quick legal/compliance round and see how you score.

Related Reading

• Taking Over a Vessel Without Its History: A Mini-Guide for Every Department