One small step… for maritime safety

Jacobsen Pilot Service and Los Angeles Pilot Station published a notice to all ships to inspect pilot ladders before the pilot boards.

Reason is an incident happened at the port of long beach in July 2020. Pilot ladder rope broke while the pilot was on the ladder - luckily the pilot was able to hold on.

On the back of the long-standing success of the Yellow-Mag ll Pilot Ladder Magnet worldwide, Serpent & Dove—Applied Magnetics is introducing its patented Yellow-Mag lll Switchable Pilot Ladder Magnet.

The Nautical Institute (NI) and the International Maritime Pilots’ Association (IMPA) have been concerned for many years at the needlessly high rate of Pilot Ladder casualties. The NI is continuously reminded of the problem from its Members and through its Mariners’ Alerting and Reporting Scheme (MARS). The issue features frequently in our publications, and we recently dedicated an edition of our award winning magazine The Navigator to the topic, emphasising the importance of good...

photo and article by Luis Vale, Portugal

The IMPA Safety Campaign will take place from 16th to 30th May 2025. We encourage all maritime pilots to take part, as your contribution is essential to the success of the campaign!

This is a video of the cruise ship pilot boat that picks up the pilot once he has navigated the ship out of the port. This is a requirement of all cruise ships coming into and leaving out of ports. We also noticed them at the Bahamas. I was able to capture this one on my last cruise leaving out of Port Canaveral... watch as the pilot jumps from the cruise ship to the pilot boat while both are moving! :)

In today's episode, we continued to take a look at the different aspects of Aberdeen Harbor, including the divers, the pilots, as well as others who work in the harbor. Pilots are required to cross between ships in the sea while both ships are still running, while divers continue to work under the sea on the pipeline. In addition, a charity event is happening on Aberdeen's main street. -- Aberdeen Harbor, on the North East coast of Scotland, is one of Britain's oldest businesses and one of...

Awesome video by Herman Broers, "The Rotterdam Pilot".

In fact, the pivot point that we “see” is a trick of the eye, it looks like the ship is rotating about this point but in fact it is elsewhere, a point that you cannot see.