Pilot boat docks at historic icebreaker

Gladding-Hearn Shipbuilding, Duclos Corporation delivered a new Chesapeake class pilot boat to the Associated Federal Pilots in Venice, Louisiana.

Embarcación ligera apropiada para realizar trabajos auxiliares de puerto, con gran capacidad de maniobra, seguridad y velocidad.

Here’s a nice video of the recent sea trials with ‘South Esk’, a new Interceptor 48 pilot boat for the Montrose Port Authority in Scotland. It was fairly rough during our sea trial days with a fair bit of wind, and although it was touch and go flying the drone, we managed to capture some wonderful video of her and Ederra 7 at the entrance to Cork Harbour in a gale.

If you fancy seeing what it’s like aboard during some rough weather sea trials, here’s a pretty cool little video of our Interceptor 48 pilot built for the Port of Sines. Some really great Arial drone footage and interesting POV (Point of view) with narration from aboard her in 5-6m seas and in 50kt winds 25 miles offshore.
How difficult is to land a drone back down on the boat in 5-6m swells and 45-50kt wind gusts? Pretty damn difficult as it turns out! Sometimes we fail as you’ll see at...

#BUNBURY#AUSTRALIA#DoiTv#lifeatsea

There are some problems that never seem to go away and one is the perennial difficulties in providing a safe way of getting pilots on and off a ship.

The pilots make docking mega-ships look easy despite the meteorological disturbance.
Great pictures from Morocco

I have had the privilege of being at quite a number of meetings, conferences and seminars, sometimes representing The Netherlands, but mostly representing the Netherlands pilots. I have had many discussions about the role of pilots and pilot organisations, which lead me to write an article “What is the added value of pilotage?”, published in the February 2020 issue of Seaways.