Launch Master (Skipper)

View from Liverpool cruise terminal, of a port of Liverpool pilot boat leaving jetty, alongside the Viking Jupiter of Bergen Norway, with boats on the Mersey. 🇳🇴 🇬🇧

Furetank turns a former office building into a maritime educational centre on Donsö outside Gothenburg: a state-of-the-art ship simulator complex for training, assessment and certification.

The American Maritime Pilot has a special and important job bringing ships into port safely. In the history of pilots Robert Smalls stands out as one of the most heroic and able pilots in American History.

In our new section "five questions to..." we would like to introduce pilots and other market players to our readers in short interviews.

Today we have talked to  Mamdouh Albaiji, Senior Harbor Pilot at "Ras Tanura at Aramco“

After 25 years of continual and significant refinement, these Camarc pilot boats remain clear sector leaders. The hull shape is now quite different yet they retain their classic Camarc good looks.

Here’s a video of recent Sea trials during ‘Storm Bram’ aboard the ‘all weather’ Interceptor 48 ‘Northeast Pilot III’ we built for the North East pilots at Newport, Rhode Island in the USA. With winds of Storm Force 11 and heavy breaking waves conditions were pretty wild, and proved a good test for her seakeeping abilities, especially her stability where she recovered nicely from a hard 90 degree knock down. Also respect to the seamanship of the captain aboard Fokko Ukena whom we filmed and...

What does a Bristol Pilot do? This is a short film we made for Bristol Pilots LLP to show what it is these guys do - from climbing up the side of oil tankers in the middle of the night, to bringing in huge ships through a lock with inches to spare either side - the Bristol Pilots do an amazing job.

Correct method of rigging pilot ladder explained.
As explained, a large number of reports related to the use of pilot ladders which are too long relative to the vessel’s draughts. As a result, the excessively long ladders require shortening up before being deployed for boarding pilots. In these cases, ship crew shortens the pilot ladders, using D-shackles to choke the side ropes at the required height along the ladder’s length. In this method, the D-shackle is first secured to a hard point...

Short time lapse video of the lauching of Pilot Boat Stainsby prior to her delivery triop to PD Ports at Teesport Middlesbrough. She is a 16m Pilot Boat designed by Camarc Design and built by Holyhead Marine.