23 November 2021
Port Ash Australia: Ship Handling Training & Research Centre
By A. Beazley, Port Ash, Australia
The Arctic magnetic pole does not move anymore. It runs, faster and faster. In recent years, even faster than expected. Therefore, geo-researchers have now had an unscheduled change to their world model and adjust their calculations, so that navigation with compass and other navigation aids such as a Pilot Plug, used by pilots around the world, continue to work.
The Master and Chief Engineer of the log-carrier MV Funing, have today been sentenced and fined after admitting charges relating to the grounding of the ship at the Port of Tauranga in July.
Master Liang Guang Hong and Chief Engineer Chameekara Prasad Nanayakkara both entered guilty pleas in the Tauranga District Court on 10 September to charges brought by Maritime NZ under the Maritime Transport Act (MTA) 1994.
Breaux’s Bay Craft, Loreauville, La., delivered the new 90’x23’x12’4″ aluminum pilot boat Spindletop to the Sabine Pilots on March 6. The Sabine Pilots, Port Arthur, Texas, serve the Texas ports of Orange, Port Arthur and Beaumont. “This is the biggest pilot boat built in the U.S.,” said Roy Breaux, the shipyard’s owner. “There are bigger ones in other parts of the world, but this is the largest in the U.S.”
Port operations, whether these are being performed on water or on land, are often not without risk. Pilots boarding a ship while sailing, navigating through narrow passages, collision avoidance with other smaller or larger vessels, discharging and moving cargo on land, walking between container handling equipment and trucks…