ViralHogAll aboard! A Finnish seaman has demonstrated how to board a ship while it’s still moving while remaining as collected and cool as the 20-inch-thick ice which surrounds him.
Luckily for us, a drone caught the man stepping onto the moving vessel on camera on April 2 near the coast of Hailuoto in Finland.
You can watch the feat (pun very much intended) below:
The footage captures the moment the pilot – so called, as explained by Port Technology, for their extensive knowledge about a port’s navigational area – decided to make the most of the icy conditions by using a small portable bridge to board the incoming ship.
In the video, a man is seen pushing a ladder on wheels across the cold ground as the vessel approaches.
Ice 20 inches thick surrounded the 190-metre-long ship, the Tavastland, as it travelled through the shipping route while on its way to Finland’s Port of Oulu.
A navigation pilot stands on the ladder and grabs a rope fashioned into a step ladder hanging off the passing ship, allowing him to climb aboard.
Some have commented on the pilot’s bravery, adding he wasn’t even wearing even a life vest.
Disclaimer: Wear life vests. You’ve seen Titanic. You know the drill.
Perhaps the two men involved, both head-to-toe in visi-vest material, hadn’t noticed all the ice awaiting them in the murky depths if the boarding had gone awry.
Maybe they just do this all the time.
Maybe the office-workers who spend about two hours a week in the outdoors are simply agog at how Man can exist so naturally in nature, and that’s why the video has been such a hit.
Okay, so it’s not exactly something out of Jame Bond’s playbook and it’s hardly going to made it in to the script of the 73232638523th film in the Fast and Furious franchise.
Yes, the boat isn’t moving at breakneck speed, there’s no ejector button on the ramp to propel him into the air and there’s no impending doom for him to escape on the dry land.
There probably isn’t even an evil super villain lurking aboard the vessel to be thwarted by the Powers of Good.
To be honest, it’s just a cargo ship and the seaman probably does this in his day job all the time, Monday through Friday, 50-odd weeks a year.
But people seem to really dig this guy’s oh-so casual approach to, well, approaching a boat. After just four days, the video had received more than 220,000 views after being uploaded by the drone-owner, Tapani Ranta.
While they might’ve been amazed by the boarding mission, as the drone pans out, it becomes clear the rest of the crew on the vessel thought absolutely nothing of it and watched on without batting an eyelid.
As the shot pans out, the ship sails off into the metaphorical sunset – read: blanket of whiteness and nothing – with the pilot safely aboard.
It’s worth a watch just to see the beauty of the ice caps while they’re still around, to be quite honest.
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A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.