Tugboat pushing barges narrowly misses Natchez Steamboat this past weekend in windy

Meanwhile... How many people were murdered over the weekend?

quote:

---

For all the wannabe river boat pilots!

---

That’s a towboat . The pilots’s everyone bitches about advise ship captains how to get up and down the river. They are on the bridge but only give directions. The helmsman steers per Captains orders who follow the River Pilot’s advice.

Towboats have captain’s and a crew. No pilots. Captains come up from deckhands.


Pilots are born into it. For the most part.

quote:

---

High wind, high water, Algiers point.

---

There is an upstream eddy on the East side of the river from below the French Quarter to the Crescent City connection. It’s a tricky spot.

quote:

---

Do rowboat captains make anything like river boat pilots?

---

Not even close. Towboat Captains make good money but River Pilots make bank.

quote:

---

What about pay? Do rowboat captains make anything like river boat pilots?

---

No The pilots that I know take down 750,000- 800,000 a year. 7 and 7. They are set up as a corporation. Tariffs allow them to charge varying rates according to cargo.

This also enables having driver’s to transport you. Who could be your wife driving a leased, decked out Mercedes.


Towboat Captains receive a day rate. ( not sure what it is, but you can make a living ).

The river pilot world is different from towboat drivers and ship assist tugs, or barge fleeting tugs on the river.

IMO the towboat driver that run’s the river with a 50 barge tow from New Orleans to say,up the Mississippi River and on to up the Missouri River to the grain centers know their shite.

Ever constant changing water levels and shifting sandbars. They know their stuff.