Wallaby Boats model in the wave tank in slow motion

Associated British Ports (ABP) will upgrade its recently acquired pilot launches to enhance safety, effectiveness, and sustainability, incorporating feedback from its pilots and marine teams. The program will expand the fleet of larger vessels from three to five, replace older models, and improve seakeeping, crew safety, comfort, handling, fuel efficiency, and emissions reduction.

In July 2021 DACOMA launched a new EU project: AMCOSTAR. Amcostar is a Eurostars/Eureka Network funded Eurostars project on Adaptive Control of Airkeel vessel stabilizer systems. The consortium partners, DACOMA ApS in Svendborg (DK), Syddansk Universitet - University of Southern Denmark in Sønderborg (DK), and Automasjon & Data AS in Stavanger (NOR) and Tuco Marine ApS - ProZero Workboats (DK) in Faaborg, will optimize, test, and demonstrate an adaptively controlled Airkeel stabilizer on a...

Take a look at the first UK 'hybrid' pilot boat built in the UK by Goodchild Marine for the Port of London Authority. Video from 2019.

The construction and commissioning of a new pilot boat for Jacobsen Pilot Service in great pictures.

The Tampa Bay pilot association has returned its first Chesapeake Class pilot boat to Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding. Tampa was built in 2003 when the shipyard introduced the class of mid-size, high-speed launches.

Over the past few years a number of pilot transfer accidents have occurred resulting from total failure of the side ropes, one school of thought is that the methods of securing a pilot ladder is a factor in such occurrences.

The individual pilot operates as part of a pilotage organisation. And, as with so many things, the whole is (much) more than the sum of the parts ...