Valdez tug pilots: tug attentive: climbing Jacob's Ladder.

• Author: Bradner, Mike
• Position: OIL & GAS

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So you'd like to be a pilot, a marine pilot? If you like boats, being on the water and around big ships, really big ones, and you like earning good money and having time off, you might think about this career.

But hold on. Think about this: There you are bobbing around in choppy water in a small pilot boat. Your pilot boat approaches the ship, and it's moving. As you nudge up toward the ship you look up at 60 feet of vertical hull. You've got to climb that.

Down from the deck high above comes a flimsy, flexible ladder, dangling in the wind. You have to reach out, grab it, step (or leap) across open water from one moving, bobbing vessel to another, and then climb the ladder, which in seamens' lingo is a Jacob's Ladder. And don't look down.

Sounds a little melodramatic, but this is how the marine pilots who guide big ships into port go to the office, and if you're a pilot who guides the big oil tankers in and out of the Port of Valdez you do it every day. You'd better be fit, too.

HIGHLY TRAINED MARINERS

A pilot is a highly trained mariner who guides ships through congested, constricted waters like harbors. The captain is still in overall command of the vessel but the pilot is the person who guides it to its final docking at the end of the voyage. In some cases the pilot is in physical control of the ship, but even if not the captain, by custom, always defers to the local knowledge of the pilot.

The marine pilot controls the ship when it is in crowded harbors or confined waters. While the captain knows his ship well, the pilot is the expert on a particular waterway. In the case of the Prince William Sound tankers, the concern is Valdez Narrows, the narrow passage between the Port of Valdez itself, a wide, open body of water, and the larger expanse of Prince William Sound.

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The winds can get tricky in Valdez Narrows, particularly for a large tanker coming in empty and riding high in the water. The huge bulk of the ship is like a sail. This is less of a problem when departing Valdez because the loaded tanker sits low in the water. But tidal currents can also be challenging in Valdez Narrows. Prince William Sound doesn't have tides as high as Cook Inlet, but its tides are still high.

Cook Inlet poses tricky navigation problems for shipper with high tidal currents, shoals, winds and, in winter, ice. Maneuvering large ships in to dock at the Port of Anchorage has become more of a problem in recent years because of silting and shoals forming on the approaches to the port.

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