Port Tampa Pilot Gets Picked Up

Pilot boat Razorbill southbound on the River Mersey, returning from the bar.

Southwest Alaska Pilots Association’s new Gladding and Hearn built, C Raymond Hunt designed pilot boat disembarks Capt. Ron Ward at Bligh Reef Pilot Station in Prince William Sound, Alaska March 2020

Award winning 15m wavepiercing pilot boat

Oct. 13, 2022
Harbor pilot departing the NCL Prima in rough seas.

Earlier this month, Snow & Company of Seattle, Wash., handed off Savannah, the first of two new 64-foot aluminum pilot boats to the Savannah Pilots Association.

A marine pilot who sadly died after a ‘fall from a pilot ladder’ in the Humber Estuary has now been named. Video credit: BBC Look North/BBC News Hub

Spectacular (silent) film footage of the construction of the Panama Canal more than a century ago. The film shows the construction of the Miraflores and Gatun locks in detail as well as the digging of "The Culebra Cut" including steam trains, steam shovels and steam dredgers at work and scenes of the locks an the Canal in its first days op operation in 1914. Wikipedia: The Panama Canal (Spanish: Canal de Panamá) is an artificial 82 km (51 miles) waterway in Panama that connects the...

New guidance for PBAs with trapdoors. Released 4.11.2020 at NZMPA Conference in Dunedin, NZ. Distinct difference to suggestions in many other countries, is that we challenge operators who have the ladder suspended from the accommodation ladder (gangway) and not secured to the ship. SOLAS states that pilot ladder shall be secured to the ship, and securing strongpoints, shackles and ropes shall be as strong as the sideropes.

Most pilot embarkations and disembarkations around the world, are still carried out using a traditional pilot ladder, consisting of wooden steps supported and secured by side ropes.

The following article appeared in AIMPA magazine number 2 about the strength and testing of pilot ladders : There is much more information about pilot ladders in the AIMPA magazine, second issue, if you wish to read more you can download a copy at the bottom of this post.