Incident on 31 January 2020 : A rope of the pilot ladder breaks. Pilot could still reach the vessel

From that moment on I have been keeping a tally of the non compliant boarding arrangements I see in front of me on a daily base, and off course I participate in the annual safety campaign, conducted by IMPA each october.

A 35-year-old male sea pilot of the Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) fell into the sea from a crude oil tanker near the N Shed Wharf in the port of Durban. A rope of the pilot ladder is said to have snapped for an undetermined reason when the man disembarked while leaving the crude oil tanker which was leaving the port of Durban.

Before you, you see my third article on pilot boarding arrangements. After my two previous articles ‘1000 ways to secure a pilot ladder’ and ‘1000 ladders around’, I have received a lot of feedback and also questions to get deeper into the matter of combinations and embarkation platforms.

The Professional Association of Maritime and Inland Pilots (Beroepsvereniging van Loodsen – BvL) announced on Thursday that its strike over Belgium’s pension reform will continue throughout the weekend.

Boarding Accident Claims Marine Pilot's Life off Yalova, Turkey. Maritime-Executive.com as well as Seanews.com.tr report unanimously on the death of a Turkish pilot

An accident occurred in the Kiel Canal lock at Kiel-Holtenau. A freighter crashed into the gate of the north chamber on Saturday. The Kiel Canal is the busiest man-made waterway in the world.

Found on YouTube:

Tom Mellor - C​hairman of the IHO Electronic Navigational Chart Working Group (ENC WG) and Head of Digital Standards at the UKHO - explains what the IHO's ECDIS and ENC Standards mean.

OPERATIONAL NOTES AND RECOMMENDATIONS by UKMPA, February 2017
The introduction of modern lightweight Portable Pilot Units (PPU) for use during pilotage has proved to be another major advance for pilotage operations worldwide.

To better bundle all articles and messages about Marine / Maritime Pilots I would like to suggest the Hashtag #MARINEPILOTS. We can use it well here on LinkedIn, but also for other social media like Twitter.

At Humber Maritime College we have state-of-the-art marine simulators to teach our Merchant Navy cadets in an environment close to reality, preparing them for a career at sea.