Why ships crash

[j.sabourn]

Most of the smaller ports like Port Lincoln where the harbour master maybe the only qualified person , then he is it both Harbourmaster and pilot. The likes of Darwin when I was there and had been going in and out for about 3 trips in a row without a pilot , suddenly the harbourmaster wanted me to sit for the exemption for the port , he was new out from the uk and had been on the cross channel ferries. The exemption took a day in the harbour masters office filling in a blank chart with all the depths and lengths of quays from memory . That meant going up a day early to join the ship which would have been two days extra pay and company just moved me to another ship working out of Dampier where I already had an exemption for. A harbourmaster has quite a bit of authority out here and is a hands on working job mostly. The likes of Singapore which is a very busy port used to observe the rules of the day and pilotage was not compulsory and was according to tonnage . Most ships I took or brought out of there were below that , so never used a pilot. However there were times when wished had one even just to do the reporting in system on the VHF they have every 20 minutes or so it seems and the traffic is quite heavy , just another place in the world Where the demanning of ships shows the intelligence of the law makers re shipping. JS

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi John.
I can't remember ever picking a pilot up when on the NZ coast, could have had the odd one in Sydney but can't remember it, probably as USS went to the same ports all the time.
Des