For 170 years, the San Francisco Bar Pilots have been navigating the world’s largest ships through some of North America’s most difficult waterways. These state and federally-licensed master mariners are highly-specialized ship captains who rely on navigational experience, ship-handling skills, and local knowledge to transport more than $1.2 billion in goods to and from 200 Bay Area ports, docks, and berths every day. This critical service protects more than 1,000 miles of fragile coastline...

The pilots make docking mega-ships look easy despite the meteorological disturbance.
Great pictures from Morocco

Six leading Ports join forces to show the world their Smart Port model

Produced by Safehaven Marine

Filmed on 15.7.19

Pilot boat "Muir Pilot" departing Pirate Harbour

In the second of our series focusing on ‘Our people at ports’, we catch up with Pierre Chays, our Marine Safety Manager and Pilot who gives us a behind the scenes look at what our Harbours Team is doing during these difficult times in supporting the movement of essential freight services in and out of the Island. For him, it is very much ‘business as usual’ – and outside of his working hours he’s getting used to having another baby around the house.

Pilot boat approaches Carnival Splendor off the coast of Victoria, Canada

Another great education video by Knud Benedict (Germany): Practical experiments for getting useful data for planning.

Matthias Meyer was head of the Bremerhaven port pilots, nautical expert and lecturer at maritime schools. In front of our camera, he voices what has long been a topic of discussion in shipping circles: that the 400-meter container ships have simply become too big for the narrow shipping channels of the Weser and Elbe. In his view, a serious accident is only a matter of time. We take a look at how the district is dealing with these giants and what politicians, BUND and shipowners have to say...