Do it at night, in the rain, on a turbulent seas and plenty of people would say “sorry, but that job’s not for me”.

But this is the sort of thing marine pilots at Port Kembla do every day of the week.

With each port posing its own quirks when it comes to navigation, it’s easier to have someone with local knowledge guide the captain in and out.

That’s where the marine pilot comes in - while the captain always remains in control of the ship, the role of the pilot is to direct them into the port.

And for that, they need to be on the ship. So one of the pilots on duty - there are three working over a 24-hour period on overlapping shifts - climbs into a pilot boat manned by a ship port officer and port officer.

They head to a rendezvous point around three kilometres off the coast of Port Kembla, where the ship port officer pulls up alongside the ship and the pilot climbs aboard.

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Sometimes that’s easy, such as when a cruise ship has a door or hatch on the side not too far from sea level.

Other times it’s not. Like when they have to scramble off the deck of the pilot boat and climb a rope ladder up to a hatch around 10 metres above water line. Or even worse, it could be a rope ladder attached to a metal gangway hanging off the side of the ship - and the pilot has climb up both of them.

Oh yeah, and they’re not harnessed to the ladder either. If they slip, they end up in the water. Or on the deck of the pilot boat.

So it’s not the easiest of jobs.

“You get out there with gale-force winds at two o’clock in the morning, it can be pretty hairy,” said Port Kembla Harbour Master Kell Dillon.

“We train our people extremely well and have all the safety gear and equipment but there’s no dressing up the fact that, to have to climb a rope ladder up the side of a ship, sometimes up to eight or nine metres, from one moving platform to another moving platform, with no safety harness ... it’s a pretty risky activity.

“But we control that risk really well.”

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While the Port of Newcastle uses helicopters to get their pilots out to the ships, that’s not really an option for Port Kembla. Aside from the cost, the majority of the ships coming into Kembla - unlike Newcastle - don’t have any flat surfaces where a chopper could land.

The marine pilots climbing those ladders aren’t amateurs - they’re all former ship captains (naval or commercial) who have gone through more that two years of training. The pilots also have to pass tests to be licenced to pilot a particular type of ship, and each sort of ship will require a different licence.

Part of their training occurs on a ship simulator at the Australian Maritime College in Tasmania, and they will also practice ship handling with scale models at Newcastle’s Port Ash.

At Port Ash, the pilots sit in the models; it does look like fun but Dillon said they take it seriously.

“I tell you, when you’re on the water you forget very quickly that you’re on a model,” he said.

“It’s all to scale and you actually hit things, and you can damage things if you’re not on your game. So you really get absorbed in the ship handling techniques.”

Whether it’s bringing a ship into port or getting one out, a ship’s captain is always in charge of their vessel. The pilot is simply standing next to him, explaining the vagaries of the port.

“Ships go all over the world and each port’s got its own particular nuances of tides and currents and rocks and shoals, the way the channel moves,” Dillon said.

“For safety reasons there’s a local expert, which is the pilot. They’re an expert in all those local nuances. They provide advice to the master of the vessel on entering or leaving the port to do so safely with that local knowledge.”