Boarding via Tug Boat - Is this safe?!

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.”

The transfer of pilots to and from seagoing vessels should not rely solely on mutual trust and good intentions.

SWATH build by Abeking & Rasmussen (Germany)

Poseidon Sea Pilots (an AMS Group subsidiary) invited our CoastGuard team to check out the new Pilot boats that are operating out of Mooloolaba.
These Pilots work night & day escorting large ships in and out of the port of Brisbane.

Efforts to free the giant container ship are continuing after the 400m-long vessel became stuck in the Suez canal. Local authorities attempted to dislodge the 220,000 ton vessel from the banks of the canal using tug boats, but the megaship remains stuck more than one day after it ran aground.

These are images that no one wants to see. How can people take such a risk and behave so unprofessionally? Purely a matter of luck whether you come home again in the evening!

This article describes the findings from two studies that utilised an integrated systems thinking framework to understand how pilots make decisions and what factors are perceived to influence their decisions.

MOSES (autoMated vessels and supply chain Optimisation for Sustainable short sEa Shipping) aims to improve the SSS component of the container supply chain through a series of innovations including innovative vessels and optimisation of logistics operations: