Rodman 41, Embarcación de Prácticos y Puertos.

How an aluminium boat is built.

Delta Launch Services, the operating company for the Associated Branch pilots on the SW Pass of the Mississippi, has taken delivery of a new pilot boat from Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding, Duclos Corporation. This is the sixth St. John’s Class launch built for the Delta pilots by the Somerset, Mass. shipyard.

Here’s a nice little video of rough weather sea trials that coincided with ‘Storm Agnes’ last week in the Interceptor 48 pilot boat ‘Svitzer Oued Laou’. The storm produced some pretty big waves at the entrance to Cork Harbour, and strong winds during the height of the storm. We managed to capture some cool footage from Roches PT lighthouse. It was fairly rough, although by not coinciding with the ebbing tide conditions aboard were quite comfortable, and our Pilot 48 handled it effortlessly...

HamiltonJet unveiled its new Electro-Hybrid Drive (EHX) system – innovative technology that offers all the advantages of electric drive with the full capabilities of diesel.

This unique system delivers lowers fossil fuel consumption (reduced further when dock charging, as infrastructure allows) combined with the speed, manoeuvrability, efficiency and safety waterjets are renowned for.

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...

Visit https://www.maritimetraining.com to purchase the full-length version. Produced by Maritime Training Services.

Meanwhile, female pilots are more and more common.

Improvements to pilots’ situation awareness (SA) in maritime navigation are critical to reducing human errors, which have caused 75% to 96% of marine accidents over the last few years.

A harbor pilot has the difficult job of bringing ships into port. A candidate for Albay Yacht Club has invited me to document the process. I went with Jud, the harbor pilot.

The transfer of pilots to and from seagoing vessels should not rely solely on mutual trust and good intentions.