Piloting

Piloting (also called pilotage) involves navigating a vessel in restricted waters and fixing its position as precisely as possible at frequent intervals. More so than in other phases of navigation, proper preparation and attention to detail are important. Procedures vary from vessel to vessel, and between military, commercial, and private vessels.. It is the responsibility of the navigator to choose the procedures applicable to his own situation, to train the piloting team in their execution, and to ensure that duties are carried out properly..A military navigation team will nearly always consist of several people. A military navigator might have bearing takers stationed at the gyro repeaters on the bridge wings for taking simultaneous bearings, while the civilian navigator must often take and plot them himself..While the military navigator will have a bearing book and someone to record entries for each fix, the civilian navigator will simply plot the bearings on the chart as they are taken and not record them at all.If the ship is equipped with an ECDIS, it is reasonable for the navigator to simply monitor the progress of the ship along the chosen track, visually ensuring that the ship is proceeding as desired, checking the compass, sounder and other indicators only occasionally..If a pilot is aboard, as is often the case in the most restricted of waters, his judgement can generally be relied upon explicitly, further easing the workload. But should the ECDIS fail, the navigator will have to rely on his skill in the manual and time-tested procedures discussed in this chapter.