Marine Pilot

The chairman of the Suez Canal Authority has suggested a possible mistake by the captain of the Ever Given could have led to the grounding of the giant container ship in the waterway last month.

My personal impression is that a lot has changed in terms of safety in the last two years. Non-compliance with current legislation that directly affects the safety of pilots is now no longer tolerated by many stakeholders. Something is happening. And that is a good thing.

Article originally published in SWZ|Maritime September 2022

Through the years, the Dutch Pilots have developed a system of selection, initial education and continual professional training. What is the current state of affairs?

Australasian Marine Pilots Institute (AMPI) latest of edition of Safe Passage including articles from Nic G. "Passenger Ship Redundancy", Karolina Cirjak "Pilots are not advisors to the Masters", Clive Sheard "Digitising Pilotage Peer Learning", Arie Palmers "A 1000 Navy Vessels Around", Matthew Conyers "Meanwhile in Brisbane", Robert Tanner Wollongong Conference.

It has been 1 month since the 1st case of coronavirus in the country. All airports were shut down, and mandatory confinement was issued 10 days ago. Nevertheless, Maritime shipping must continue (except for tourist related). The means that us pilots must continue with our duties despite the risks involved with all the ships' crews arriving from different countries. So we need to take all safety measures possible.
This particular maneuver was unberthing a chemical tanker, in loaded...

Ships don't exactly have brakes. Lou Vest, a retired Houston ship channel pilot tells us about a close encounter between a ship and a barge.
https://houstonmaritime.org

Port of Shenzhen added 3 new boats to their fleet.

"Analysis of reports indicates that pilot ladders (Pilot Transfer Arrangements, or PTAs) and
intentional deviations from safety procedures remain the main causes of near misses..."

This study presents a novel decision support process for a pilot dispatching problem in the St. Lawrence River. It integrates a comprehensive set of time-based performance measures, including working time, waiting time, and skill level differences, to optimize fairness and operational efficiency in pilot dispatching.