The Hair-Raising Career of a Chesapeake Bay Pilot

A container ship is reported to be stranded off the coast of Gibson Island in the Chesapeake Bay. Marine Tracker lists the ship as the Ever Forward and that it is aground. It appears there are several tugboats out of Baltimore trying to assist. The company that operates the ship, Evergreen, is the same one that was responsible for the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal a year ago.

Up close with Ever Forward: Massive cargo ship stuck on Chesapeake Bay for a month

The U.S. Coast Guard found the local pilot on the Ever Forward was distracted and the ship’s captain had left eh bridge before the massive cargo ship ran aground in the Chesapeake Bay. News4’s Mark Segraves reports. _______ NBC4 Washington / WRC-TV is the No. 1 broadcast television station and the home of the most-watched local news in Washington, D.C., the country’s seventh largest television market. NBCWashington.com is the market’s most-visited local television station website across all...

The San Francisco Bar Pilots are one of the important cogs in our supply chain wheel. They are tasked with boarding the vessels eleven miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge via a rope ladder often in rough seas and taking control of the vessels en route to the Port of Stockton. Once on the bridge of the ship, the Pilot oversees navigation and ensures the safe passage of ships into the Bay and through the Delta until it is secured alongside its berth at the Port. Without these Pilots the...

Finnish Pilots at work.

To monitor the vessel’s progress, the pilot had set up his portable pilotage unit (PPU). He had connected the rate-of-turn generator to the vessel’s pilot plug and had set a variable range marker on the radar with a radius of 0.5 nm.

Ladders are the bridges for crossing the rough seas of our lives.
When you are a Marine Pilot at work, hoping and praying that the ladders which let you embark the vessel are stable, safe and not dangerous.
In Memoriam of the late Captain Dennis Sherwood who passed away on Monday the 30th of December.

“The current plight many seafarers are facing, unable to crew change or return home, is being described by many voices within the maritime community as the next humanitarian crisis.”

AMSA: A pilot was seriously injured after losing balance when a large wave impacted the vessel at the same time as they stood up to remove their lifejacket while in the cabin.

SOLAS/IMO/IMPA Regulations require additional safety measurements for pilot's boarding and disembarkation since recently. These magnetic holders of two types, one is manually set and the other is a remotely controlled one, fixes both pilot ladder and accommodation ladder (gangway) strongly onto the hull of the ship. Thus, the pilot can climb more safely. We are negotiating with ISO, IMO, IMPA etc in order to standardize these items for pilot safety.