Deputy Harbour Master

Queensland and one of Australia’s longest serving custom commercial and recreational boat builders, Norman R. Wright & Sons, has secured the contract to build 2 new custom designed 14.8 metre Pilot Boats for PNG Ports Corporation from Papua New Guinea.

Here’s a nice little video of the sea trials of ‘Svitzer Oued Martil’ including some cool on-board 360 camera footage of her going through some pretty big breaking seas during rough weather testing, and some nice foggy day drone footage and trials alongside the Brittany Ferry ‘Armorique’.

Like threading a needle. Watch as the skilled captain of the Pacific Chinook comes alongside of her sister ship the Pacific Pathfinder to transfer some crew. Watch how precise he can maneuver the boat with her water jets.

According to various reports, the motor vessel "Else" damaged the gate of the Kiel-Holtenau lock at 5:00 a.m. on 29 August when it entered the closed gate without a pilot.

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 following short clip appeared on TikTok recently, showing a non compliant trapdoor arrangement, and a pilot using it. From this short video, the dangers of this kind of arrangement are very clear.

Awesome drone video from Latvia

Issues like the Covid 19 crisis and the moves towards increased autonomy appear to be driving a renewed interest in Shore Based Pilotage (SBP), nowadays often called Remote Pilotage.