Salmaa Vincent

Salmaa Vincent is the first open licence female marine pilot in the port of Saldanha. She consciously chose her vocation because she needed something challenging. “Another reason I chose this career was to inspire and show other young women that the sky is not even the limit. You go above and beyond to make your dreams come true,” she explains. “Initially I wanted to do engineering, so I did job shadowing to see if it was what I really wanted to do and I was not happy about all the noise in the engine rooms on the Tugboats.” “I saw what the Tug Master was doing when he was assisting the Marine Pilot to dock (Park) the ship and that caught my attention. I was fascinated. I decided to do maritime studies and pursue my career in the marine services. I received a bursary form TNPA (at the time, the company was just Npa-national ports authority.”

She finished her studies at CPUT Granger Bay campus and started her sea time with SAFMARINE. “For 20-months I was at sea doing my cadetship to qualify as an officer. I travelled around the world and that was one of the highlights of my career as a youngster I was studying and at the same I got to see so many countries around the globe.”

Vincent qualified as Officer of the Watch in March 2008, the following year she started her Tug Master training and qualified as Tug Master the same year. “I qualified as STC facilitator and started assisting as a Tug master facilitator at the Transnet Maritime school of Excellence in 2009 till April 2010. I enjoyed training students to become Tug Masters. In 2010 I was selected to do Pilot training. I started my Pilot journey in October 2010.” “In December 2010 we were sent to Rotterdam for further piloting training for a few weeks and returned to Durban for further theoretical training. I did my physical pilot training in the port of Cape Town where I qualified in October 2011”.

Her achievements include, among others, docking and sailing VLCC ships of 330m long and a deadweight of 300 000t.