Difficulties Of Embarkation

Despite clear regulations and regular maintenance requirements, safety often falls by the wayside, as the current example of a bulk carrier vividly demonstrates.

On the occasion of the Maritime Safety Week (July 4-10), UK MAIB’s inspector Bill Evans refers to the issue of unsafe pilot ladders, a concern that has been regularly voiced by the industry.

Pilot boat picking up two pilot crewmen from odyssey of the seas cruise ship port of civitavecchia Italy 🇮🇹

Local Harbour Pilot boat in choppy sea at Ramsgate Kent England, filmed on 2.4.25

Recording of cruise ship Pilots boarding from boat at speed

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!

The use of historical navigation data by ports is essential for safety investigations globally. In the digital age, a wealth of pilotage data is available, aiding operations and training but potentially causing stress if misused.

We’re doing another day of testing with the self-propelled scale model of T-2000. Obviously the conditions here do comprehensively exceed the designs operational envelope, as in scale proportion to the model, the waves must be I guess around 10-20 metres in size. However it’s interesting to understand the designs ultimate limits. The model is built to a scale of fourteen to one, and this equals 20 metres in real life size. Later, by slowing down the video, so that it matches the speed of...