Marine Pilot

University of York: Here, Dr Kate Preston explains why we need to fully understand the complexity maritime pilotage before we can integrate technology like autonomy.

Ships have reported an increasing number of cases of significant GPS interference and jamming in recent months. The geographic areas with more than one reported incident include the eastern and central Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, and multiple Chinese ports.

Some impressions from a sail on the Falmouth Pilot Cutter Pellew in October 2021. The Pellew was built by Luke Powell and his team in Truro at https://www.workingsail.co.uk/ between 2017 and 2020.
Trips on Pellew can be booked through Venturesail on their website https://venturesailholidays.com/voyage-finder

Case Study Video:
BHP - a global mining company and port owner – asked us to develop a test set-up to see what happens during a snapback event and evaluate their safety protection fence. The test data helped in the development of a safer protection fence and gave real insight into snapback behaviour.
Collaboration with BHP, Geobrugg and Wilhelmsen.

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

PortXchange Products B.V., the Netherlands-based digital solutions provider for predictable and sustainable shipping, is pleased to announce that it has successfully completed the migration of users from the Greater Houston Port Bureau’s (“GHPB”) Harborlights Vessel Tracking System (“Harborlights”) to its proprietary PortXchange PilotTracker (“PilotTracker”) platform.

Brightlingsea Harbour - a mixed leisure and commercial port on the East Coast of England
has recently signed contracts with Seaward to have a new pilot boat built, The demands of Pilot duties as well as working as a patrol boat and harbour launch, and the sea conditions that can occur in the area made the Nelson hulled Seaward the natural choice of vessel.

Some pilots have already lost their lives because of this non-compliant construction. We don't want to see such an arrangement again. Here is a latest video from the Middle East.

A Finnish research project has concluded that remote pilotage can be built today with components already on the market. Its most difficult problems turned out to be cognitive load, communication discipline and trust.

Without a shadow of doubt, shipping is a key enabler of our current way of life and the globalized world we live in today. The irony is that the average person is unaware of the significance or contribution of the shipping industry and how much we rely on ships working without disruption