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Every day for 160 years and in all kinds of weather – the calm of autumn, the fog of summer, the storms of winter – stout pilot boats have cruised 11 miles at sea, ready to provide commercial ships with pilots to guide the vessels into San Francisco Bay.
The pilots, who are required by state law to guide ships entering or leaving the bay, have been around since the Gold Rush and the great age of sailing ships. Only now, the ships that they serve are as long as 70-story buildings are high. The pilots, as they always have, must make the jump from their boat to the rungs of a rope ladder that leads up to the large ships.