Land and Sea: Sea Harbour Pilots

It turns out that supertankers and cruise ships have valets. They're called maritime pilots, and they're among the most elite ship handlers in the world. So where does one go to learn how to park the largest ships in the world? To the Maritime Pilots Institute in Covington, La. There, they use mini-versions of the behemoth boats to teach the basics. All aboard!

Two decades ago, candidates were selected for TNPA's accelerated training programme in Rotterdam, which aimed to train a new generation of ship pilots, managers and other maritime professionals.

Discover your true worth, you're not searching for gold, you are the gold!

When I was a deck officer back in the early nineties I worked on a ship that used to load grain at different ports along the Mississippi river. The name of the ship was Golden Hope, a 600 feet long dry bulk carrier with a 95 feet in beam. An average size vessel for those days' standards.

Chapter 3 from the book "Crossing the Bar, The Adventures of a San Francisco Bay Bar Pilot" by Captain Paul Lobo, available on Amazon (link below)

Caught at Cuxhaven, Germany

Port authorities in Antwerp, Belgium, are making use of EMSA’s Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) to support their day-to-day monitoring of port operations and rapid response to pollution incidents in the port area. The RPAS will enable the authorities to inspect at a distance their complex port environment which extends over an area of some 120km².

Alabama’s Mobile Bar Pilots has awarded Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding of Somerset, Massachusetts, a contract for a new 53-foot (16-metre) pilot boat.

This week, Kewatec handed over another popular boat, Kewatec Pilot 1630, to the pilot boat operator Gdańsk Pilot in Poland. The fast pilot boat is self-righting and designed with extraordinary safety performance for both the pilots and boat operators.

The Port Phillip Sea pilots launch Torquay out and back again, seen at Point Lonsdale, Vic, Aust.
Ship spotting at Point Lonsdale and other water activities by Wally on Water.