In this edition of Rumos Práticos, we made a concerted effort to address safety, both in pilot embarkation/disembarkation and in port projects.
We invited pilot Arie Palmers who works in the Scheldt region (Netherlands) to write an article on irregularities in combined ladders with a trapdoor. After his two accidents in 2019, Arie Palmers is now an active inspector for problems found in general embarkation arrangements and is cofounder of the #DangerousLadders group on Facebook.
An overview follows about how pilotage worldwide is coping with situations involving trapdoor ladders. In his article, pilot Marcio Fausto, from the São Francisco do Sul and Itapoá pilot station (Santa Catarina-SC), now suggests a checklist before boarding for different kinds of arrangement, including trapdoors. Palmers and Fausto are emphatic when recommending postponing boarding in event of irregularities, an approach that has proven effective in solving any observed shortcomings.
Also on the matter of safety we have an article showing how the preliminary risk analysis is more and more often adopted in port operation and construction designs, with the contribution of pilotage expertise.After addressing the São Francisco simulator in the last edition, we describe here the maneuver simulation center of the Rio de Janeiro pilot station, installed in April. The training space was visited by Isaquias Queiroz, the canoeing athlete, soon after winning his gold medal in the Tokyo Olympic Games. Check out his welcome on the following pages.
Lastly, continuing our series on pilotage zones, we visited the historic pilot station of Barra do Rio Grande (Rio Grande do Sul-RS), origin of Francisco Marques Lisboa, patron of our profession, and father of Admiral Tamandaré, Joaquim Marques Lisboa. If in the past he and his contemporaries helped brave the so-called devil’s sandbar, until the construction of breakwaters that lowered the risk of the crossing, today the pilots still collaborate to overcome congestion of infrastructure and increase the efficiency of operations in the port.
Good reading!