Pacific Warrior (ULOC)
LOA 360m. Draft 22.3 m. Displacement 430k
Marine pilots must make crucial decisions under extreme conditions. Transferring from a cargo ship to a small pilot boat in hurricane-force gusts can be fatal. For marine pilots, this is the most dangerous moment in their daily working lives: climbing down a rope ladder from a cargo ship in gale-force gusts, and transferring to a small pilot boat. In mid-January, a pilot fell into the sea off Borkum and was taken to hospital suffering from hypothermia. Just a few days earlier, a British...
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!
Here’s a pretty cool video covering the recent sea trials we undertook with the La Coruna pilot boat. Some nice gale footage 20 miles offshore, and the fun we had trying to land the drone back down in high winds as well as alongside ship handling trials with the Taccola, operating out of Cork Harbour at present.