Successfully logged out

Bulk Carrier sailing from Seaforth Dock through Gladstone Lock into The River Mersey

Many consider the Bristol Channel pilot cutter to be the finest sailing boat design ever. Fast, seaworthy and beautiful to behold, the pilot cutter is the perfect combination of form and function - a thoroughbred perfectly adapted to a life in one of the Britain's most treacherous stretches of water. Sailor and writer Tom Cunliffe explores the life of the pilots and sails a perfectly restored cutter to find out just what drove these men and their wonderful machines.

Safehaven Marine have just launched an Interceptor 48 pilot ‘Ederra 7’for the MVD Pilots Association, Montevideo, Uruguay. Here’s a nice video with some fabulous drone footage of her undergoing rough weather sea trials ensuring she’s well up to the task of an ‘All weather pilot boat’.

Another worthful video by Knud Benedict, Germany

Compmillennia LLC (Washington, North Carolina, U.S.A.) has delivered its Lightspeed® 41 (15.5-meter) Pilothouse catamaran, featuring strong but lightweight all-composite construction with a 42-knots achieved by twin 300-hp V8 Mercury Seapro outboard engines.

Sanmar Shipyards has signed six vessel contracts together totalling US$33.46 million with the Port Qasim Authority (PQA) in Pakistan for four high-performance state-of-the-art tugboats and two pilot boats. The tugs are scheduled to be delivered in 12 months and the pilot boats in 10.

Port of Szczecin. One of the largest ports in the Baltic Sea. We brought them Swedish timber. The Poles are shocked, they have always shipped timber to sweden. The timber became more expensive and the Swedes are now selling it to the Poles)))

There were some astonishing pictures in the press some weeks ago of a Royal Marine employing a jetpack to launch himself from a RIB to land on the deck of a ship with extraordinary precision. You cannot imagine that it would be a feasible proposition to equip pilots with such a device, but it did cross my mind after reading a horrible catalogue of disgraceful seamanship and poor design exhibited in what ought to be the simple matter of keeping pilots safe as they board and leave ships.

‎Berthing a tanker ship LOA 185 m draft 9