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  • (light music)

  • - Ships are magnificent creatures of the sea,

  • built, designed for the deep waters of the ocean.

  • But once you bring these magnificent creatures

  • to inland waters around the world,

  • they get fairly clumsy.

  • (light music)

  • - A ship at sea may travel 3,000 miles in a straight line.

  • But the difficulty happens when you get to port,

  • and that's when the ship pilot takes over.

  • (light music)

  • He's essentially like a valet who parks your car.

  • The pilot comes out usually on a small pilot boat,

  • and then they climb up the side of the ship

  • on a small ladder, up to the wheelhouse,

  • to get the ship into the port.

  • - If it floats, we are capable of moving it.

  • (light music)

  • - Here at MPI, we train ship pilots

  • to guide the largest moving objects on the planet.

  • We have traditional classroom training.

  • We have a state-of-the-art ship simulator,

  • and then we have manned model.

  • (light music)

  • Although these models may look like toy boats,

  • they're actually precise tools

  • used to mimic the behavior of vessels.

  • (light music)

  • If you took a full-size vessel

  • and shrunk it down 25 times,

  • you could get very reliable results.

  • - A human being on our models would be

  • like an inch and three-quarters tall.

  • - The manned models are between

  • 24,000 and 30,000 pounds of weight,

  • and they have 0.4 horsepower.

  • They behave exactly like a ship.

  • - This is real.

  • This is how it's done onboard all the ships

  • around the world.

  • Starboard 10 degrees.

  • - Starboard 10.

  • - We surely would not want to practice

  • with a perfectly good ship,

  • and say, "Captain, we have to drop anchors,"

  • and simulate broke down engines and steering.

  • So we do that with these vessels.

  • (light music)

  • It's a profession that, I think, for me,

  • at the top of the maritime field.

  • It's an awesome responsibility, and very challenging.

  • When I finish the walk down a dock,

  • look back at the ship and say,

  • "Yes, that was a good challenge."

  • (light music)

(light music)

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