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out here when it's rough weather this is a really dangerous spot we'll be coming alongside
Landing we can have swells of 25 feet 50 knots of wind it can be scary every year around
the world a pilot will die this might just be the world's most dangerous commute
one that Captain Zach Kellerman makes every day to get to work he has to jump from a swaying
boat to a rope ladder and scale a massive container ship 15 stories high they're climbing
a throat ladder up the side of the ship or down and we do it in all conditions Kellerman
is part of a small but Scrappy unit called the San Francisco Bar Pilots a group of Master
Mariners who for the last two centuries have been climbing some of the world's largest
cargo ships then steering them in and out of the San Francisco Bay they're called Bar
Pilots for their ability to guide huge ships through shallow Channels with sand bars on
either side we are the first line of defense for the bay when these ships are coming in
we make sure we keep them safe Kellerman's work day starts at Pier 9 in San Francisco
where he boards a small boat that will take him to the Port of Oakland there he'll climb
onto a container ship and guide it out to the Open Sea both state and federal law require
a local pilot to take over from the ship's Captain then steer the ship in and out of
the bay not just to protect the cargo but the bay itself when we first started back
in 1850 during the gold rush we were brought on to keep the ships safe from the environment
now we're keeping the environment safe from the ships today Kellerman is boarding a state-of-the-art
cargo ship called George III delivering anywhere from 150 to 300 million dollars worth of goods
to Hawaii this tight spot right here is one of his biggest challenges very narrow and
it's only 50 feet deep so we have a limited amount of space on each side and also below
us it's very difficult to become a pilot 23 years ago Ann McIntyre now the group's business
director made waves as one of the first ever female Pilots she says typically candidates
attend a four-year Maritime Academy and are required to have 15 years of experience before
they can even apply then you sit for a written exam a simulator an exam and an interview
and those folks that pass everything then have the opportunity to spend another 18 months
to three years training
McIntyre says Bar Pilots serve as the human Link in the supply chain responsible for almost
all containerized Goods moving through Northern California they went mostly unnoticed until
the pandemic supply chain disruptions caused an epic traffic jam of ships Around The Bay
these guys were the ones to get it moving again the pandemic was tough it really took
the supply chain disruption for people to understand how how critical we are to uh to
the economy
pull up next to the ship we get one final instruction no swimming no swimming
it's a steep climb no safety net or harness luckily it's a beautiful day but this is the
Bay Area after all and conditions can deteriorate rapidly more on that later so here we are
in the George three once on board just look around and you get a sense of how Mammoth
this ship actually is how much does a ship like this go for well this ship is 250 million
dollars Ed Washburn the senior vice president of Fleet operations for the company that owns
the ship takes us to the Beating Heart of this vessel huge clean energy engine about
200 times that of an average car ships can be built specifically for the Hawaiian trade
so they need their goods right away or if we're late the stores are empty okay Liberty
uh they're ready for you this is why Kellerman wastes no time with the help of two tugboats
he slowly pulls the 45 000 ton ship out of its spot and into the channel
now we're starting to kind of speed up a little bit speaking of which slow ahead slow ahead
his biggest concern other than cross currents boat traffic and sand bars along the ocean
floor is a thick blanket of fog forming on the horizon kinds San Francisco is famous
for that's a lot of fog yeah are you going to be able to see through that far or does
it get completely uh White we will probably be completely enveloped.
within minutes the fog closes in looking forward you can't see past the bow look back and you can see
and feel the tension on the team's faces
after 11 long miles of mere zero visibility ship is safely out of the Bay Kellerman is
not out of the woods after handing control of the ship back to its rightful Captain Kellerman
has to rush back to his Pilot boat before conditions get too dangerous this time he's
in the open sea and that rickety ladder is his only way down
hey we seriously gotta go you guys
he still has to climb down that rickety ladder and back onto his Pilot boat but this time
he's in the open sea it's a nail-biting moment that gets worse every year as the weather
gets more extreme
as he's dangling from the side of the ship the pilot boat gets into place so he can jump
there is little room for error one wrong move here could be catastrophic
now it's our turn it's even scarier than it looks putting your trust in a simple rope
ladder as it turns out is not for the faint of heart thankfully it goes without a hitch
at the end of a long day Kellerman heads back to the Pier having made it through yet another
shift I think accomplice like I've done something and uh you know have a little bit of an adventure
along the way then again some people are just more adventurous than others yeah we'll do
it again tomorrow welcome I think we're good [Music]