Puget Sound Pilots

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A foreign cargo vessel is carefully guided through the waters of Puget Sound by Capt. Norman Werner, one of Puget Sound Pilots’ 54 experienced pilots.

Puget Sound Pilots bring home the goods

by Danielle Rhéaume

E

very day, as Washingtonians go about their business, enormous ocean-going vessels point their bows toward Puget Sound. They carry everything from denim and electronics to motorcycles and crude oil— even food that will fill the pantries of families across the United States.

Collectively, the cargo they deliver each year is worth $80 billion.

As these vessels enter the Strait of Juan de Fuca, they slow to rendezvous with a pilot boat. Whether the vessel is a tanker headed to an oil refinery near Anacortes, a Korean cargo ship delivering Hyundais to the Port of Tacoma, or a luxury cruise ship returning from Alaska, Washington state law requires that all vessels—with few exceptions—take a marine pilot onboard when traversing the waters of Puget Sound.

Safety is Job No. 1 Safety is the primary concern. Captains of foreign ships, and even those under U.S. registry, don’t know the topography of the sound like an experienced local. That’s where Puget Sound Pilots comes in, providing seasoned mariners to safely guide these huge ships to port.

The pilot boats are dispatched from the Puget Sound Pilots’ station on Ediz Hook, near Port Angeles. Side by side, the two vessels couldn’t be more different. The largest ships—about 1,000 feet long—stretch nearly 14 times the length of a 73-foot pilot boat and tower above it like a skyscraper. As the vessels meet, the big ship’s crew drops a Jacob’s ladder over the side. With the assistance of a deck hand, the pilot steps from the deck of the pilot boat onto the 40-foot rope ladder. From there, he scales the hull of the massive vessel. The wooden rungs shake in the pilot’s hands and sway under his feet as the ships cut through the water. From above

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Photos courtesy of Puget Sound Pilots

and below, crewmembers on both vessels monitor the pilot’s precarious ascent. They’re prepared for the worst—a perilous fall into the freezing water. Most often, though, it turns out to be yet another safe boarding executed by one of Puget Sound Pilot’s 54 pilots. In a single year—no matter the time of day or how inclement the weather—these pilots will complete nearly 8,400 similar missions.

Once safely aboard, the pilot assumes navigational control of the vessel. While the ship’s captain is still ultimately responsible for the safe navigation of the vessel, the pilot directs the vessel into and out of ports. This includes navigating the waters of straits, estuaries, sounds, rivers, lakes and bays. To do so, the pilot must have specialized knowledge of local conditions, know how to work with tugboats through difficult passages and understand the handling characteristics of other large ships they might encounter along the route. In fact, all Washington pilots-in-training must prove that they have memorized the details of navigation from Port Angeles to each of the many ports in Puget Sound. They do so by meticulously charting each path by hand—which is no easy task considering the distance between Port Angeles and some of the more distant ports in Puget Sound, like Olympia.

Facing the challenge One of the challenges pilots face is that Puget Sound is a large and uniquely complex pilotage area. Capt. Delmar Mackenzie, who was a pilot for many years before becoming president of Puget Sound Pilots, is no stranger to these challenges. “We have a large tidal force here. We can have negative tides to three feet and high waters to 12, so you can have a

15-foot tidal range in six hours,” he said. “There are a lot of details to pay attention to.” Ships cruising through a dredged channel sometimes have only four feet between their keel and the floor of the sound. This affects how the ships handle. In addition, turbulence and currents caused by the confluence of multiple bodies of water in Puget Sound makes navigation even more problematic.

“On a beautiful day when I’m cruising down the sound, sometimes it’s hard to believe they’re paying me for this,” said Capt. Mackenzie. “But then, on a blustery February when it’s pouring rain and I’m trying to back a ship up the Duwamish Waterway, or into one of the tight holes in Tacoma, it’s nerve-wracking!”

Considering the challenges posed by Puget Sound, it’s no wonder that Washington has stricter pilotage requirements than any other state on the West Coast. Prospective pilots must have many years of experience as captains of large vessels such as container ships, military ships, tugboats or passenger ferries. Then, potential pilots must pass federal and state pilot testing. State testing has always been the most difficult, and a couple of years ago it became even more so. One of the main reasons the Washington State Pilotage Commission raised its standards is due to the increasing size of ships in recent years.

Bigger ships In the not-so-distant past, the largest ships most pilots ever boarded were 500-foot timber ships. Nowadays, there’s less timber being exported from Washington and far more goods being imported from Asia. Most of these products are transported on very large, ocean-going vessels. Because of this, the commission decided that it was more important for the pilots to have hands-on training, where they learn how to handle those ships under the direction of a senior pilot.

Once they’ve become licensed by the state, pilots still have limitations on their licenses for the first five years. “They can’t become a pilot one day and then move a cruise ship the next day. It takes five years before they can get to that class of ship,” said Walter Tabler, executive director of Puget Sound Pilots. Tabler began working in maritime law more than 25 years ago at the state attorney general’s office.

“These are all safety-based laws,” explained Tabler. “The deep-sea captains aren’t accustomed to handling their ships through port waters, because they’ve had pilots wherever they’ve gone. The tugboat people are very familiar with ship handling, but not with ships of that size. The ferry people handle ships all the time, but their ships aren’t that large.”

Security of America’s ports Tightening of homeland security over the past six years has added yet another layer of responsibility to the pilot’s duties. “The Coast Guard randomly picks vessels entering Puget Sound, somewhere between the pilot station and the port that they’re bound for, and tells us that there will be a security boarding,” said Capt. Mackenzie. In these situations, the pilot acts as a liaison between the Coast Guard and the captain and crew of the incoming vessel. The relationship between the ship’s captain and the pilot is one based on trust, according to Tabler. “The captain turns his ship—which is an enormously valuable piece of equipment with cargo—over to a pilot that he may know, or may never have met before.

And so, there’s a relationship of trust between the ship’s captain and the pilot.” Though most captains speak English, they often need a native English-speaker to help them communicate with the Coast Guard.

Because of this, the captains “sometimes rely quite heavily on the pilot— not just for navigational support, but to handle security boarding,” according to Tabler.

Capt. Peter Giese makes the perilous ascent from a small pilot boat to the deck of a cargo ship, 40 feet above the icy water.

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One of the busiest waterways in the world, Puget Sound poses uniquely complex challenges to navigation for vessels both large and small.

Photos on this page by Tim Heneghan

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“Scheduling is very, very important to the cruise and container industries,” said Tabler. “If a cruise ship is a couple of hours behind schedule, thousands of people may miss outbound flights.” According to Capt.

Mackenzie, lateness may even be worse for container ships. “Not only are the [stevedoring and longshoring] gangs standing by, but it’s a costly operation and penalty to the shipper, because they have to order more gangs later and further into the day. Then, they’re sharing the berth with another ship and the domino effect is just continuous.” All of this underscores the importance of maintaining efficiency in security boardings.

“When security boarding first started, it took a couple of hours to go through all of this,” said Capt. Mackenzie. “But we’ve collected enough information and worked with the Coast Guard enough over the past few years that we can get a routine boarding down to about 20 minutes.

Puget Sound Pilots, now in its 72nd year of operation, also advises cities on port development and environmental concerns. “Because we’re licensed and regulated by the state, we view ourselves as a public resource for navigation-related issues,” said Tabler. “The people who take the most advantage of our resources are the port districts and the industry reps. But virtually anybody can come knocking on our door and say ‘Hey, we’d like to have a speaker to talk about ship movement and recreational boats at our yacht club. Do you have somebody who can come?’ And a big part of what we try to do is educate anybody who is interested in anything to do with navigational safety—whether it’s the characteristics of the rescue tug in Neah Bay or what somebody should be thinking about when he’s had four beers and he’s driving through Neah Bay in his 24-footer.”

The pilots, crewmembers, dispatchers, administrative staff and executives of Puget Sound Pilots all take their jobs seriously. They understand the importance of safety, environmental protection and homeland security. They know that commerce, which Capt. Mackenzie describes as “the heart of Puget Sound,” depends on cooperation, trust and good international relations.

As Capt. Mackenzie put it, looking down at the port from Puget Sound Pilots’ downtown Seattle headquarters, “Directly or indirectly, probably half of the employment in the area is related to these ports right here.”