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.

Safehaven Marine have just launched a new pilot vessel for Svitzer. ‘Svitzer Oued Martil’ is a new 15m Interceptor 48 Pilot for pilotage operations in Tangier,Morocco and is the third pilot boat we have supplied to Svitzer in Tangier, with the first and second pilot 48’s working successfully the past 3 years and represents Safehaven’s 47th pilot vessel delivered Worldwide.

The Australian company Hart Marine specialises in building pilot and patrol boats of the highest quality.This is not surprising, as the owner's father, Mal Hart, was a harbour master and therefore very familiar with the requirements of a pilot boat.

Video by Safehaven Marine / Frank Kowalski
Here’s a cool video of the latest Interceptor 48 pilot boat we’ve launched for the Gdynia Pilots in Poland. We captured some nice alongside ship footage during the sea trials and had a chance to test out our new drone ‘catch net’ on Thunder Child.

In 2020, the Swedish Maritime Administration, Sjöfartsverket commissioned three new pilot vessels to replace retired vessels in its Gothenburg, Marstrand, and Lysekil locations on the country’s west coast.

This video complements the earlier demonstration of wind effect on straight track and shows now wind effect on turning circles. It can be seen that during a turn under strong wind the ship reduces turning when it comes close to equilibrium on straight track - if the Wind-to-ship speed ratio is big enough then the ship even goes straight instead of turning. This is shown for three samples for Head, Stern wind and Beam wind. The turning can be increased if the ratio of Wind speed-to-ship...

Research on hydrodynamic interaction indicates that if the speed of the ship near a bank is too high, the rudder may be less able to cope with the forces induced and control will be lost. The Nautical Institute highlights this in its latest Mars Report, in which an LPG carrier hit a barge being towed by a tugboat as a result of hydrodynamic forces.