Suezmax Tanker Northbound İstanbul Strait

105000t crude oil tanker, passing the Strait of Istanbul (Bosphorus) in november 2015. In the beginning you can see new bridge. More timelapse videos: Between sky and sea http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHGlWcUBqtc Novorossiysk timelapse http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_9YFEiJe6A Press like or follow me, if you liked it =)

As a rule, every pilot has the right to refuse an unsafe ladder. Safety first! A brave pilot is not the one who uses an unsafe ladder, but the one who, in case of doubt, asks for a different ladder or a different setting.
Unfortunately, too many pilots climb a dubious ladder when in doubt.

An entire day caught in a time lapse. Up and down the river twice.
Cool prospective 12000 TEU ship Turing min 2:00. !

Tuesday, October 1st is the start date of the latest International Maritime Pilot Association's annual Safety Campaign.

Previous campaigns by the association have consistently shown results of pilot ladder deficiencies around the 20% mark.

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.

Personal Locator Beacons (PLB) and other individual MOB devices have been available for some years now and have evolved to incorporate a variety of different alerting methods and combinations. However, usage of these additional enhancements within UK Pilotage is still in its infancy.

It has been exactly one year ago that a pilot from Sandy Hook (New York), Dennis Sherwood, died in the line of duty while attempting to board the container vessel Maersk Kensington.
What has happened since then? Has safety been improved for the pilots?

From home to work.

This article was first published in January 2022: The safety aspects of the maritime autonomy solutions need to be addressed. In order to develop maritime autonomy in the first stage in Finland, the Sea4Value / Fairway (54VF) research program has been established to create automated remote fairway pilotage features in the near future.

Lack of standard user interfaces across bridge equipment is a major concern for maritime safety. Pilots are in a unique position, as they are constantly exposed to new and differing bridge working environments, equipment, interface designs and combinations of systems. As pilots face this problem throughout every shift they need to put in considerable effort to adjust their work to the many user interfaces they meet.