Like many seafarers I have long been a keen follower of The Nautical Institute’s MARS programme, and along with many other members I listened to the recent webinar on that topic. One theme which was repeated more than once was that it is better to learn from someone else’s misfortune rather than have it happen to you. Having personally been involved in two near misses resulting from unsafe pilot transfer arrangements in a relatively short space of time, I asked how experiences and knowledge specifically about pilot ladder safety could best be promulgated to avoid repeating common accidents or near misses.
Understanding the fundamentals of the pivot point is highly required for understanding the alteration of the courses. Pivot point is an imaginary point on the vessel which turns on a circular path on the perimeter of vessel’s turning circle when the vessel makes a turn. The knowledge about the position of the pivot point in a manoeuvring situation provides the ship handler with the information on the geometry of motion of the ship.
The AUTOPLAN (Automatic Navigation Assistance System for Planing and Semi-planing Crafts) project kick-off meeting was held on 10th September 2020 with the participation of the project partners and the consultants: Uzmar Shipyard (Project Coordinator-Turkey), Technical University of Berlin (Germany), Friendship Systems AG (Germany), OES-Offshore Engineering Solutions Inc. (Turkey), Mersin University (Consultant-Turkey), SVA Potsdam (Germany) and Piri Reis University (Consultant-Turkey).
