Offshore Pilot transfer from ship to Pilot Boat

harbor pilots disembarking in Hong Kong
container ships - IKARIA and YM Excellence

For the safety of maritime pilots

In early December, just as I was starting to get into ship spotting, I saw a couple of vessels headed up river towards Philly. One of them, the Cielo di Iyo met with the harbor pilot right as I had my drone up. I was able to capture the Pilot coming to meet the vessel and CLIMBING the ladder to get on board just before she passed beneath the Walt Whitman Bridge.

It has been exactly one year ago that a pilot from Sandy Hook (New York), Dennis Sherwood, died in the line of duty while attempting to board the container vessel Maersk Kensington.
What has happened since then? Has safety been improved for the pilots?

From "Casual Navigation": In this video, we investigate the Pilot Ladder. It is a crucial piece of equipment, used for embarking and disembarking a harbor pilot at sea.(contains advertising)

Pilotboat Galveston boarding Unit #6 inbound to Texas City. Seas got a little spicy today. 🌊🌊
#galtexpilots #gladdinghearn #pilotboatgalveston #goprohero11 #rammounts #galvestonpilots #ship #legend #crowley #ATBLEGEND #TUGANDBARGE

Port of Townsville latest Mantaray HM ORC 173, along with all Port of Townsville’s pilot boat fleet is defined by the Pantocarene designed beak bow vessels that are the forefront of pilot vessel desingn worldwide.

Such a function is also the result of hard work and at the same time an expression of high respect: Captain Erik Dalege (born 1962) is now the president of the umbrella organisation of European Pilots, EMPA for short (European Maritime Pilots Organisation).

For 174 years, the San Francisco Bar Pilots have been safely navigating the world’s largest ships through some of North America’s most challenging waterways.

That data comes from Victoria-based MarineLabs, a company building something Canada's coastal economy has needed for a long time: a real-time, hyper-local intelligence network for the ocean's edge.