Swash@A&R "Explorer"

At the A&R shipyard in Germany, the successful principle of SWATH boats was further developed in 2013: The SWASH principle allows sea-going, smaller and more economical boats.

SWATH and SWASH are interesting technologies that allow a vessel to sail much more calmly in high waves. A stable and calm position of the ship is especially important for pilot boarding.

Baird maritime awards: Southerly Designs & Dongara Marine

Here’s a video of recent Sea trials during ‘Storm Bram’ aboard the ‘all weather’ Interceptor 48 ‘Northeast Pilot III’ we built for the North East pilots at Newport, Rhode Island in the USA. With winds of Storm Force 11 and heavy breaking waves conditions were pretty wild, and proved a good test for her seakeeping abilities, especially her stability where she recovered nicely from a hard 90 degree knock down. Also respect to the seamanship of the captain aboard Fokko Ukena whom we filmed and...

Shown here is some footage of a pilot boat that was recently expertly delivered by our driver Declan to A Coruna from Cork. This load was 4.85m high, 24m long and 4.2m wide overall. It takes a great team coordinating from our office to organise the shipping, escorts and permits here in Ireland and Spain in order to make Declan's job a bit easier. It then takes the drivers expert hand to ensure that the load arrives safely and you can be sure in using Whitten Road Haulage that our years of...

Pilots are expert ship handlers who possess detailed knowledge of local waterways. They are transported by high speed "Pilot Boat" or helicopter from shore to an inbound ship and from an outbound ship back ashore. Most ports have compulsory pilotage.

A small video tutorial showing some useful tips for pilotage using Transas Pilot PRO application for iPad - Part 2, Berthing