Those Who Serve: Columbia River bar pilots risk their lives to guide cargo ships

The pilot leaps to his boat accompanied by claps and exclamations of; "Bravo!".

#OilChemicalTanker Ship "ESTEEM ENERGY"/ #RioDeLaPlataPilots #DisembarkingManeuver/ On board #PilotVessel "SEA PILOT"/ #JP #KM239_1 #PuntaIndioChannel #Recalada #BoardingPoint #RioDeLaPlata #Argentina - 01st. June 2026 - 08:54 hs. (Local Time).- This video (original sound) was filmed on board Pilot Vessel "SEA PILOT" and shows the Oil Chemical Tanker Ship "ESTEEM ENERGY", when she arrived at #BoardingPoint to start with the Disembarking Maneuver of Rio de la Plata Pilots. This maneuver...

At the mouth of the Columbia River lies "The Graveyard of the Pacific"—the deadliest river bar crossing on earth. To get a massive cargo ship safely through these crushing waves, an elite Bar Pilot has to board a moving ship by climbing a rope ladder and get's hoisted off the ship by helicopter 10 miles off shore in the Pacific Ocean. In this episode of What do you Wanna Cook?: PORTS UNKNOWN, we get you as close to the action as humanly possible. We take you inside the cockpit for an...

Who is a pilot and how do I find information about this great job on the Internet?

May is Maritime Month at the Port of San Diego and we are proud to highlight some of our hardworking men and women of the Working Waterfront. Meet Captain Lyle Donovan, a San Diego Bay pilot with the San Diego Bay Pilots Association. His work consists of guiding ships in and out of San Diego Bay in a safe and efficient manner. A typical day includes guiding a 650-foot car carrying vessel or a 950-foot cruise ship into San Diego Bay. This entails boarding the vessels by climbing up a ladder,...

We’re doing another day of testing with the self-propelled scale model of T-2000. Obviously the conditions here do comprehensively exceed the designs operational envelope, as in scale proportion to the model, the waves must be I guess around 10-20 metres in size. However it’s interesting to understand the designs ultimate limits. The model is built to a scale of fourteen to one, and this equals 20 metres in real life size. Later, by slowing down the video, so that it matches the speed of...

After 30+ years of service, the vessel needed to be re-powered. A $1.7 million re-powering project was initiated and completed during 2004.

In this episode, we are joined by Thijs Hoff, a maritime pilot with over 15 years of experience at sea and 4 years as Maritime pilot. Thijs will take us through the 'how' of becoming a maritime pilot, offering a detailed look at the educational pathways, skills, and work-life balance that come with the role.