For years, the argument for voyage optimisation has been about better recommendations: tighter weather models, smarter fuel curves, more accurate ETAs. Those things matter. But they're not what determines whether a voyage actually runs more efficiently.
What determines that is whether the Master on the bridge takes the advice.
A lot of the time, they don't. And usually they've got good reasons. The forecast didn't match the sea state outside. The recommended RPM was unrealistic for how the vessel was actually performing that day. The advice arrived two days late and the situation had already moved on. Anyone who's spent time on a bridge or in a fleet ops room can tell similar stories.
So when we talk about adherence — the rate at which Masters actually follow routing and RPM guidance — we're really talking about credibility. Adherence isn't a behavioural problem. It's a signal of whether the underlying system is good enough to be trusted.
Masters tend to follow recommendations when a few things are true: The weather forecast matches what they can see and feel. The speed guidance reflects how the vessel actually performs, not a generic curve. The recommendation accounts for the current commercial and safety picture — port windows, charter terms, weather routing clauses, exclusion zones. It updates as the voyage evolves rather than being fixed at departure. And shoreside has the same operational picture, so the conversation isn't two people working from different forecasts.
If any of that breaks down, adherence drops - and rightly so. A Master who follows obviously wrong advice is taking on risk that properly belongs upstream.
When credibility is in place, adherence rises and the gap between projected and realised savings narrows.
In 2025, a large dry bulk operator using Wayfinder ran 1,400 voyages with around 80% RPM adherence and 84% route suggestion adherence. The result: $9.7m in delivered gains and 35,205 tonnes of CO₂ avoided, measured voyage by voyage against the most recent valid operating plan rather than the departure plan.
That methodology matters. Benchmarking against the initial route flatters every system, because no voyage plan stays the same from load to discharge.
The honest question is: What value did the recommendation add over the most recent plan that was actually being executed, and how much of that did the vessel realise?
In May 2026, three of our clients accepted 100% of our route suggestions across the month. Across our customer base, exceeding 80% acceptance on both routes and RPM is normal. These aren't artefacts of easy weather or cherry-picked voyages; they're sustained rates across full operating fleets.
The reason this matters operationally isn't the headline number. It's that you can finally close the loop. What was recommended? What was accepted? What was followed? What was saved? Where was value lost, and why?
When that loop runs every voyage, deviations stop being noise and start being a source of insight. Avoidable opex separates cleanly from necessary judgement. Fleet ops moves from defending decisions after the fact to improving them in real time.
If you want to know whether your current optimisation programme is doing this, there's a simple test. Ask for last quarter's realised savings, voyage by voyage, against the most recent valid operating plan — not the departure plan — with adherence rates broken out by recommendation type. If that's hard to produce, the loop isn't really running. And without the loop, projected savings will keep being projected.
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