Pilot boat in the port of Burgas

The pilot boys on the river Haven.

Here’s a pretty cool video covering the recent sea trials we undertook with the La Coruna pilot boat. Some nice gale footage 20 miles offshore, and the fun we had trying to land the drone back down in high winds as well as alongside ship handling trials with the Taccola, operating out of Cork Harbour at present.

Following in a long line of ever more refined and very seaworthy vessels, this small example of a Safehaven pilot boat has been chosen for operations on and around Scotland’s Cromarty Firth.

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

Pilot boarding Spirit of Tasmania ship from Pilot Boat- Epic scene as in movies
#Spirit of Tasmania
#Bass strait channel

This week, the International Maritime Organization Sub-Committee responsible for developing amendments to SOLAS regulation V/23 and associated instruments (NCSR 11) finalized a new performance standard for pilot transfer arrangements, which is expected to be made mandatory by SOLAS and apply to new and existing SOLAS and non-SOLAS ships from 1 January 2028.

Video by Capt.Harold Janda

Editor's note: The pilot boarding seems a bit improvised and unsafe to me, but that's certainly business as usual, isn't it?

This study presents a novel decision support process for a pilot dispatching problem in the St. Lawrence River. It integrates a comprehensive set of time-based performance measures, including working time, waiting time, and skill level differences, to optimize fairness and operational efficiency in pilot dispatching.