Articles

Ships have reported an increasing number of cases of significant GPS interference and jamming in recent months. The geographic areas with more than one reported incident include the eastern and central Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, and multiple Chinese ports.

The Master and pilot are dependant on each other for a safe and successful beginning or end of a voyage. They are both operating in a foreign environment.

Pilot transfer arrangement is a sensitive topic to be discussed among the pilot’s fraternity. Although ships are designed and operated with compliance to the SOLAS requirements in all respects including the pilot transfer arrangements, there has been numerous deficiencies observed related to pilot transfer arrangements. The small deficiencies from the part of ships cause life threatening accidents for pilots and sometimes to the ship staff themselves. There are many instances of defective ladder and complacency in proper rigging of ladders has been reported almost every day in different parts of the world. Many pilots lost their life, severely injured for life and face many minor to major accidents. The latest incident being the Capt. Timothy Murray of Sandy hooks Pilot.

This book was only available in some areas, now the author has created an e-book version. Furthermore it´s available on amazon as a paperback.

Completely new book on Ship manoeuvring techniques based on new revealing facts which have been brought to light. Must read for all the mariners to understand the behaviour of ships and how to control her behaviour during manoeuvring.

This my attempt to do just that. This is a summary of all scientific papers and articles that I could find about the ship’s pivot point. I have added links to any videos associated with the publications and have also included any useful diagrams or equations that the authors published to help explain their research.

Before you, you see my third article on pilot boarding arrangements. After my two previous articles
(‘1000 ways to secure a pilot ladder’ and ‘1000 ladders around’, I have received a lot of feedback and
also questions to get deeper into the matter of combinations and embarkation platforms.

In fact, the pivot point that we “see” is a trick of the eye, it looks like the ship is rotating about this point but in fact it is elsewhere, a point that you cannot see.

SWATH and SWASH are interesting technologies that allow a vessel to sail much more calmly in high waves. A stable and calm position of the ship is especially important for pilot boarding.

Recently, Herman Broers launched the website PilotladderSafety.com.
This website’s goal is to increase pilot ladder safety by showing good practice examples regarding the rigging and use of pilot ladder arrangements . Do it right the first time!

At the A&R shipyard in Germany, the successful principle of SWATH boats was further developed in 2013: The SWASH principle allows sea-going, smaller and more economical boats.