Ship handling - Scenario 01: Berthing port side alongside in calm conditions

Drydocking or undocking is always a difficult task, particularly with a “dead” vessel (no power/propulsion) and the wind blowing on the ship's side.

Currently, several means of transport are undergoing an accelerated development towards automation and automated movements. This development will also impact future ship handling with tugs. A glimpse into the future of tug boat operation.

Some ship handlers today use electronic instruments from start to finish and these ships usually have powerful engines and thrusters and an almost unlimited number of personnel on the bridge.

In this movie the efficiency of two different pod operation strategies is compared: With azimuth propeller ships the Pods can be used in two ways to control the speed, e.g. for speed reduction: 1. by adjusting the engine orders, e.g. by reducing the RPMs to get lower speed - this means to drive the ship in the same conventional way as for twin screw vessels, 2. by turning both pods either in- or outward (TOE-IN or TOE-OUT) to reduce the forward thrust and therefore reducing the speed – the...

Manoeuvring large ships at close quarters and on shallow water is one of the most difficult aspects of shiphandling because of the complex hydraulic interactions depending on the ships' speeds, on the water depth and on lateral restrictions like in canals. Training is conducted both on meeting and on overtaking ships in shallow waters. This video shows how overtaking in a canal should be conducted: come in close to the stern and then move away from the bow that will be sucked towards your...

Training video VI on the correct use of the pilot ladder

Improvements to pilots’ situation awareness (SA) in maritime navigation are critical to reducing human errors, which have caused 75% to 96% of marine accidents over the last few years.

Shiphandling discussion about meeting and overtaking situations in a close quarters situation where hydrodynamic effects will come into play between ships. The lecture continues and discusses Bank Effect.

Shipbuilder Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding, Duclos Corporation, said it has delivered by road transport a new pilot boat to the Lake Pilots in Port Huron, Mich. The Resilient Class high-speed launch Huron Pride is the pilots’ third boat built by the Somerset-Mass. shipyard since 1979.

The scope of this report covers a twenty-year period between 1999 and 2019 in which there were 1,046 such recorded incidents and where each incident gave rise to P&I liabilities in excess of US$100,000.