Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and some of the tankers and most of the larger cruise ships have elevators, but the physic-
al wear and tear of climbing the pilot ladder and then the stairs to the bridge takes its inev-
itable toll. The experience required just to be invited to apply for a trainee position in
SWAPA
dictates that applicants be at their youngest in their thirties. Over the past year,
SWAPA
's pilot roster has been reduced through retirement from twenty-two to eighteen,
fourteen of which are Valdez qualified. All of the pilots interviewed for this article are
agreed that there needs to be a major push for recruitment.
On the bridge of the
Polar Discovery
, Pierce leans against the captain's chair, thumbs
hooked in his jeans, calling out course changes as he visits with the mate on watch, anoth-
er old friend. Through the windows in front of him extends most of the 895 feet (and six
inches) of the ship. Beyond it, salmon seiners litter the water of the Valdez Narrows, less
than a mile wide between Middle Rock and Entrance Point before Valdez Arm jogs right
into port. “Pilot, I make eight contacts in the Narrows,” the mate says. The height off the
water of the tanker in ballast is such that it creates what Pierce calls a “dead zone,” as in
he literally cannot see what is in front of the ship until 1,640 feet beyond the bow. So he
makes slow, exaggerated turns, telegraphing the tanker's inbound course so the seiners
can see what he's doing and don't decide to make a last-minute dash across the super-
tanker's bow. “A lot of times it's easier to just delay what you're doing,” Pierce says.
“Last trip they just absolutely behaved,” Knowlton says, and Pierce agrees. “They've
been gentlemen. Nobody's setting their net.”
This attention to other vessels navigating in the same waters is a chief characteristic of
SWAPA
pilots. “It's not any part of our business to interfere with people trying to make a
living,” Pierce says. “Besides, you meet each other on the dock.” He grins. “We do put out
a wake.”
There is a tug waiting at the Narrows, a “northern sentinel” that falls in behind as the
tanker passes and escorts it to the dock. The
Polar Discovery
is destined for Berth 4, a
dock sitting beneath a hillside full of tanks holding crude oil produced from the Prudhoe
Bay oilfields and transported down the TransAlaska Pipeline.
As the tanker approaches the port Pierce frets a little at not being able to feel the wind
on the enclosed bridge, and then in less than five hundred feet, a little over half the length
of the ship, turns the supertanker a hundred and eighty degrees to present the
Polar Dis-
