page_title: Pilot boat
section_title: Signalling
hierarchical_section_title: Pilot boat / Signalling
caption_attribution_description: English: Pilot boats Hanse and Wandelaar in the fish harbour of BremerhavenDeutsch: Lotsenschiffe Hanse und Wandelaar im Fischereihafen von Bremerhaven
context_page_description: A pilot boat is a type of boat used to transport maritime pilots between land and the inbound or outbound ships that they are piloting.
context_section_description: Pilot boats are specially marked to make it clear what their function is. During the day they fly the "H" flag and normally the word PILOT (or PILOTS) is written in clearly visible, large, letters on the sides.
  At night they have special navigation lights: in addition to the "normal" navigation lights, a pilot boat has a white round light at top and below that a red round light, while a fishing vessel has the red light at top and the white light below.
  To remember this, some people use the mnemonic "white cap, red nose" to reflect the idea that pilots consumed a lot of alcohol while waiting for ships, thus the white captain's cap with a red nose below it.
  Pilot boats often also use bright colors, like flashy yellow, to make them clearly visible and distinctive in even the worst conditions. This last mainly applies to the so-called pilot tenders: the vessels that go to the ships to bring the pilot on board of arriving ships or pick them up from departing ships. Depending on the local situation the tenders might be launched directly from a nearby harbour or they are coming from the central (large) pilot station: a pilot boat located at a pre-defined location at sea near a pilotage area. In earlier days nearly all pilots came from a "pilot station" at sea, but with the modern very fast tenders it is often more practical not to have a permanently manned pilot station at sea, but transfer the pilots directly to/from shore.
caption: German pilot boats, normally stationed at sea
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