Boats
Mood:  not sure
I was talking with someone else, yesterday, and they were telling me something that I'd not heard before, about shipping.

Now, boats aren't really my thing, and as I was listening to this person, talking, I began to realise the boat isn't the important thing in this story. I was hearing about the ship's pilot, the person who's taking all of the information that's available to them, the charts, the weather, the other people around them, all of the technology that can provide so much information, and making sense of it, and steering the boat in the right direction. Good pilots get to know what information is useful, and relevant, and important, and make decisions that keep the boat on course, into port.

Well, that much I already knew. What I hadn't yet realised is just how important it is to notice the detail of what's going on around you, always, when you're being the pilot. You need to be noticing information that might be relevant in forty-five minutes time, when the boat is in a different position, and where it is now, and where it's come from. I'm sure that having a computer to help navigate by satellite is a whole lot simpler than navigating by the stars, but being a pilot is about a whole lot more than just knowing where you are, now.

Some of the boats we send around the world now are huge. Take a really big boat, like an oil tanker. Some of those tankers can take over three miles to stop. If you want to go left you've got to check that there's nothing in your way beyond the horizon, beyond as far as you can see, and to know that once you've committed to taking this action you're committed to following the process through, and that you won't be able to stop along the way, or make urgent detours. Knowing that it takes time to reach the destination port, and to pace the journey, and to notice what information can provide guidance about the adjustments that need to be made, now, to take us in the right direction now, and in the future. That's a lot of responsibility, and these pilots keep on making those decisions every day, bringing the cargo into port, safely home.