Port Kembla, Australia.
34°28'S, 150°54'E
It is primarily a bulk port (with iron ore arriving for the steelworks and coal being exported).
to control athwartship velocities to very low contact speeds. In the past, such movements were
only conducted during daylight hours, but that was severely limiting flexibility – especially in the
winter months when there might not be a suitable high water for several days.
The solution: HarbourPilot
DGPS reference station transmitting on UHF, enabled the final approaches to the berth to be
controlled very precisely – at a much lower cost than installing laser-docking systems.
Implementation: The HarbourPilot equipment was delivered in November 2004 and training
conducted for the pilots. On the second day of training, an unexpected benefit for the Port
Company and pilots was discovering the performance of HarbourPilot when negotiating tight
bends in the channel. The larger ships normally require the assistance of three or more tugs
for the main turn through the breakwaters - and there's always that initial doubt in the Master's
and Pilot's minds… ‘are we turning fast enough?’ HarbourPilot can give them that confirmation
before the ship has turned through even the first 10° of a 90° turn - so allowing the pilot to ease
the turn much sooner and avoid cutting the corner on the inside of the turn.
been involved with for years. Normally they go through endless teething problems before you
get anywhere near the promised results, but it worked straight away. I'm amazed how willingly
the pilots have adopted it; some of them were quite opposed to the whole concept."
- Capt. Dennis Parson, Harbour Master, Port Kembla
at night…
"The reassurance from the HarbourPilot greatly relieved the tension. Visually, in the dark,
everything always looks very close, but getting confirmation of exactly where the ship was and
how she was moving, meant there was time to sort out the problem without any panic."
- Pilot, Port Kembla
Port of Ravenna, Italy.
port, with a narrow canalised channel which has berths on both sides.
wanted a system that allowed them to move ships in and out of the port safely and more
efficiently – even in poor visibility conditions. The narrowness of the canal meant large ships
could not even see the sides on radar, as they were below the vertical beam-width.
The solution: HarbourPilot
on Navicom Dynamics’ reputation andHarbourPilot's obvious ability to meet their needs and
requirements.
their differential corrections, they achieved a high level of accuracy. Combined with scaled
AIS target display of other vessels on the pilot’s laptop, and with curved-path prediction of
future positions in a turn, HarbourPilot provided an excellent source of complementary
information to the radar and enabled movements to be conducted safely.
in and out of Ravenna port in any kind of weather conditions, in particular thick fog. Last night,
for example, we had the possibility to perform piloting of two container ships, one entering and
the other leaving the port. Without HarbourPilot, it would not have been possible to berth and
unberth these two ships, because of extremely thick fog, until the following day. Thanks to
HarbourPilot, we can guarantee a more efficient service and safe navigation through the port."
- Andrea Maccaferri - Captain of Pilots, Port of Ravenna.
Port of Lyttelton, New Zealand
the port for Christchurch - New Zealand's second largest city, and the fertile Canterbury Plains.
One of its principal export cargos is coal - railed across the Southern Alps from the West Coast.
Its inner harbour is in the flooded crater of an extinct volcano, so space is at a premium.
habitation so it was decided to move the coal berths further out and instead use the vacated
berths for car carriers. These ships have high windage and the visibility astern is notoriously
bad, so turning them in the inner harbour before berthing was a major challenge.
The solution: HarbourPilot
When swinging large car carriers before berthing stern-first on the finger wharves,
HarbourPilot's accurate display of the position and movement of the stern in relation to other
wharves and fixed structures is invaluable.
Implementation: A HarbourPilot system was supplied in November 2004 and training was
conducted for the pilots. The DGPS corrections from the signal are transmitted on UHF and
decoded in the HarbourPilot hardware. A special large-scale S-57 chart cell was created
specially for the port as no ENCs were available.
system is not confined to car carriers. The curved path prediction facility proves extremely
useful in gauging the turn to pass through the harbour entrance, and when making a
sternboard into the berth.
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