Marine Pilot (Thevenard)

IMPA and CHIRP Maritime have collaborated on a video to support the 2024 IMPA Safety Campaign and Survey which takes place 1 - 15 October 2024. More details can be found at www.impahq.org.

Over 90% of the world's trade is carried by sea. Watch and learn how a pilot boards a container ship before entering port.
In this video, a cargo ship bound for Houston, Texas is boarded by a Houston Pilot before entering the Houston Ship Channel.
#maritime #HoustonPilots #houstonshipchannel

Qualified pilots are usually employed by the local port or maritime administration, and provide their services to ships for a fee, calculated in relation to the ship’s tonnage, draught or other criteria.

If you have been looking for a Pilot Boat to use in your simulations, take a look here.

Dr. Tobias Haack (Hadag)
Dirk Lehmann (Becker Marine System)
Evangelos Fragkoulis (Svitzer)
Moderation: Eva Beykirch (Navisense)

This expert article is based on a presentation given by Capt. Pilot Sven Stemmler at the MCN's (Maritimes Cluster Norddeutschland e. V. ) event ‘On the Future of the Pilot Profession’ at Fraunhofer CML in Hamburg on 9 September 2025.

Pilot boat in the port of Kobe

Understanding the fundamentals of the pivot point is highly required for understanding the alteration of the courses. Pivot point is an imaginary point on the vessel which turns on a circular path on the perimeter of vessel’s turning circle when the vessel makes a turn. The knowledge about the position of the pivot point in a manoeuvring situation provides the ship handler with the information on the geometry of motion of the ship.

Conference Paper (PDF) by ResearchGate: International Seminar on Safety and Security of Autonomous Vessels (ISSAV) and European STAMP Workshop and Conference (ESWC) 2019, At Helsinki, Finland