Land and Sea: Sea Harbour Pilots

Welcome back to the Fluctus Channel for a feature on the important role of tugboats in navigating the bigger vessels in harbors and canal, as well as the open seas.

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.

Gabon, Baie du Prince, 2012.
Getting that nice fat lady alongside

A court sentenced a captain to a total of 30 months imprisonment: It had been proven beyond doubt that the side ropes had been manipulated to make a ship inspection more difficult or to prevent it.

Port Revel is a ship handling training center for pilots, captains and officers. Unique in its kind, it allows to acquire new skills, to improve on different manned models at scale 1 / 25th.

Occurrence Brief from the ATSB (Australia)

A handy and simple tool to determine in a minimum time what is really needed as tug assistance, is the Bollard Pull Calculator which calculates in an approximate way the total required tug power for ships in various conditions of wind and current. This tool can be loaded as an app on the smart phone.