Port of Stockton: River Pilots

How do marine pilots work? Example: Bringing a bulkcarrier alongside to „Hansaport“ in Hamburg. Here the tugboats „Prompt“, „Resolute“ and „Bulldog“ are involved. The master has to rely on the pilot. One reason is, that he can‘t know how to deal with these tugs. A maneuver like this is only safe, when the pilot has a lot of practical experience. A master who is doing a maneuver like this only about once or twice a month and each time with tugs he doesn’t know in areas he hasn’t been to...

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!

Tampa Bay Pilot

Roberta Cotta and Teresa Matarese are the only two women in the Italian Federation of Harbour Pilots (Fedepiloti) team of 212 professionals.

Helicopter services company NHV Group has won a contract extension with the Dutch Maritime Pilot’s Association (Nederlandse loodsencorporatie) to support maritime pilotage services in the Netherlands.

The local harbor pilot boards the 2GO Maligaya on the port side during her Monday noon arrival to Cebu from Manila
See my photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/dareleven/

A Virginia Pilot Association harbor pilot disembarks the U.S. flag containership Maersk Atlanta before the ship sails north along the U.S. East Coast.
Featured in this video is the Virginia Pilots' brand new pilot boat, Hampton Roads.

Recently Capt. Troy Evans did a research into the breaking strength of various securing methods. To quantify the problem of unsafe practices, now is time to have a survey into the number of the various securing methods used worldwide.

Editors note: A film of a pilot boat has just been published on YouTube with the title "How Dangerous being in a Pilot Boat..." on YouTube. I'm not sure if this really shows a dangerous maneuver, maybe the experts can comment on it here.
But in principle it is problematic to approach the ship in such a small Pilot Boat in the wake from astern and cross the waves there. I remember an accident from Finland in December 2017 where the boat capsized and people died. Is this situation shown here...