For most of us, the Day of the Seafarer (25 June 2025) passes unnoticed. With our strong focus on shipbuilding, we as a magazine often pay far too little attention to sailing itself and to those who ensure that all those ships with all those passengers and cargo get safely from one port to another, and to all the knowledge and skills that this requires. And that’s why it’s a good thing we have a true seafarer in our midst: our editor Captain Ed Verbeek, with his many years of experience as a helmsman, captain and pilot in Amsterdam and IJmuiden.
He asked a number of organisations what they considered to be important issues, and the result is a nautical special in our July/August issue. With articles on how to embed seafarer feedback into ship design, the digitalisation of the seafarer’s job with human-centric AI, pilotage risk management, the critical balance of safety and sustainability in pilotage areas and how spatial planning can jeopardise shipping safety. The Mars Reports discuss where new technology can have unintended consequences. This does not mean that these are the most important topics. ‘What you consider to be most important depends on your background and perspective,’ as Verbeek emphasises.
He himself could mention a number of other topics that would have been appropriate, such as: bridge alert management (note: alert, not alarm), developments in the S100 family of standards for ENC/ECDIS, fires on container and car carriers, autonomy and highly automated systems and ships, designing decision support systems in a way that they actually support decisions, how to deal with GPS jamming and spoofing, and so on. So, enough subjects for next year.
Also read: SWZ|Maritime’s June 2025 issue: Annual figures and Frisian-Groningen shipbuilding
Hybrid fleet and deepwater wind
But this edition is once again highly interesting even for the non-nautical articles, featuring an article by Rui Costa about “The race for the hybrid fleet”, the second article from Hengameh Farahpour on “The race for deepwater wind”, a contribution on the value of superyacht shipbuilding from consultancy agency Marstrat, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, and a CEDA article on an interesting project that the dredgers of Van Oord realised in Romania.
And don’t forget to stop by in Amsterdam, where SAIL will take place for the tenth time since 1975, from 20 to 24 August, with
Amsterdam also celebrating its 750th anniversary this year. Read our colleague Gerrit de Boer’s preview of the event and his review of an interesting book about wooden shipbuilding in the Netherlands from the late Middle Ages to the present day.
This is editor-in-chief Antoon Oosting’s editorial accompanying the July/August 2025 issue.
SWZ app and archive
Our digital archive is available to subscribers both online and in our new app (available for Android and Iphone) and they can read the digitial version of our July/August issue there. Not yet a subscriber? Visit our subscription page.
Also read: SWZ|Maritime’s May 2025 issue: Handling all jobs, big and small
The articles in SWZ|Maritime’s July/August issue
In addition to the regular sections such as Dutch news, Global news, KNVTS, Book reviews and Mars Report, the articles in the July/August issue are:
- The critical balance
- Pilotage risk management
- Embedding seafarer feedback in maritime system design
- Human-centric AI
- How spatial planning can jeopardise shipping safety
- SAIL 2025: Talls ships keren terug naar Amsterdam
- The race for the hybrid fleet
- The race for deepwater wind
- ‘Waarde superjachtbouw vaak onderschat’
- CEDA – Defending the shore
- CEDA – Port Klang to ramp up container capacity
Picture: SAIL Amsterdam is thé 2025 nautical event and takes place in August. On display there for the first time is the Shabab Oman II, built by Damen Shipyards (photo by Flying Focus).
Also read: SWZ|Maritime’s April 2025 issue: Martin van Dijk’s last inland navigation special
