The Kyushu Monrovia sits at Atlantic Terminal, its belly stuffed with nearly 3,000 Nissan Pathfinders, parked bumper to bumper and cabled onto seven different tiers.
As it prepares to sail from Baltimore, the massive Japanese car carrier faces a tight schedule for discharging more cars in Newark, N.J.
But without Bill Band, the Kyushu is going nowhere.
At precisely 10 a.m., Mr. Band, a Maryland bay pilot, climbs the steep steps to the ship's navigation bridge -- a glass-enclosed area 90 feet above the water -- where he greets the Kyushu's captain, its helmsman and third mate.
On the blackboard inside the bridge, he checks the vessel's air draft clearance -- 152 feet from the water line to the highest point of the ship -- to make sure it will pass under the Francis Scott Key Bridge two miles ahead.
Quickly, he also determines the maneuvering speeds of the engine and locates the ship's all-important warning whistle.
Using a tugboat down below, Moran Co. docking pilot Jim Hicky shoves the Kyushu off the pier at the terminal in Fairfield and pushes its bow sharply into the main channel. At 10:20 a.m., Mr. Band signals that he's ready to take over. Verbally, he begins nursing the 15,700-ton vessel out of its berth.
"Starboard 10," Mr. Band says firmly to the helmsman.
"Starboard 10," the helmsman repeats, as he moves the rudder 10 degrees to the right with an electronically controlled wheel.
By law, most cargo vessels sailing between the Atlantic Ocean and the port of Baltimore must be guided by state-licensed bay pilots who are familiar with the twists and other idiosyncrasies of the Chesapeake Bay and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, Maryland's two passageways to the ocean.
Moving cargo ships in close quarters -- sometimes merely dozens of yards away from each other -- is Mr. Band's expertise. Yet, even after 20 years, it is skill that requires constant refinement.
"The name of the game is experience, anticipation and good judgment," said the 45-year-old Mr. Band. "You have to do this again, again and again," he said. "If I didn't do it for a couple months and then I got on a ship like this in bad weather, I'd be terrified."
Mr. Band is one of five dozen Maryland bay pilots who are members of the Association of Maryland Pilots and among the 18,000 people whose livelihoods are directly dependent on shipping activity in the port of Baltimore.
With more than 2,300 ships coming and going in Baltimore each year, bay pilots work on a rotating schedule and are required to leave with only two hours' notice. As with many port jobs, flexibility is critical.
"When I get into the top 10 on the rotation schedule, I am literally hanging around the phone," said Mr. Band, who also keeps a pager and a car phone nearby. He averages 100 trips a year.
But the erratic lifestyle rewards him well -- more than $150,000 a year in salary, though he pays all expenses much like an independent contractor. It also allows him to spend time with his wife, Tammy, and two children, Shannon, 12, and Travis, 9 at their Towson home.
Mr. Band is a oceanography-turned-business major who graduated from the State University of New York Maritime College.
Like other senior pilots, he trained in a five-year apprentice program.
The pay -- and scarcity of jobs in the American merchant marine -- make the profession highly competitive. For Mr. Band, there is still the sheer thrill of the job.
"We're handling the biggest things people make, and I get to do that," he said.
At 8 knots --10 miles an hour -- the Kyushu moves almost imperceptibly, past the rusty Dormitor, the Serbian ship that was seized two years ago by the federal government and has been stranded here since then.
A motorboat darts across its path, flirting with the leviathan towering above it. A sailboat, a mere dot on the horizon, tacks as the Kyushu moves forth into the channel.
It is a clear morning. The water is slack, a welcome change for Mr. Band, who frequently sails in unpredictable, turbulent weather, most often at night.
While Capt. Noboru Otsuka faces economic pressures to move the Kyushu's cargo on time, Mr. Band is beholden to no one, except the state of Maryland. If the weather is too dangerous, he can delay the ship, sparing Captain Otsuka the burden of making wise, yet time-consuming and costly choices.
So long as the ship remains in Maryland waters, the decision to sail rests with Mr. Band.
Dressed nattily in a tweed sports coat, tie and pleated slacks, he carries a small, black suitcase, containing charts and tide tables that provide vital information about the wind and the depth of the channel. Because of the limited water depth outside the 400-foot-wide channel, his navigation must be exact.
"You have to anticipate what's ahead and what you should be doing to get there," he said. "With so much of the ship above water, you can literally get blown out of the channel if you're not careful.
"In fog or poor visibility, you can get pushed right into another ship," he said.
Only once -- when he nearly rammed a dredge in the C&D; Canal -- has he come close to an accident, Mr. Band said.
In storms, he relies heavily on radar, but even that's not foolproof. Last winter, for instance, ice on the bay got so thick that it appeared as land on radar. Buoys marking the channel's parameters were covered with ice, forcing Mr. Band to use well-memorized land markers, such as flagpoles, as guideposts.
Today, however, visibility is good and Mr. Band will only need the ship's high-powered binoculars as he moves from the Fort McHenry Channel into the Brewerton Extension Channel.
"Port 15," Mr. Bands commands.
"Port 15," the helmsman echoes.
Above his head, Mr. Band glances at the rudder angle, a device that indicates the direction of the rudder, left or right, and how much rudder is being used. Then he checks his course on the gyro-repeater, an electronic compass in front of him that duplicates the gyrocompass before the helmsman.
With little traffic, he steadies the ship in the middle of the channel. Passing Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s mill at Sparrows Point, he orders the ship slowed from 12 knots to 8 knots, for fear that its wake will rip loose a ship docked at Bethlehem.
The Kyushu is 623 long and 106 feet wide, a medium-sized ship by today's standards. Because it displaces thousands of tons of water, its wake can cause considerable damage along the shores of the narrow channels. Inside the C&D; Canal, moving the ship too fast could literally sweep people off the beaches.
For the next four hours -- until the ship reaches Chesapeake City, a third of the way into the C&D; Canal -- Mr. Band never leaves the navigation bridge. At lunchtime, the Filipino crew will bring him a tray with soup, salmon and rice.
Even in good weather, leaving his post is unacceptable, for mistakes are not easily corrected on a vessel the size of several five-story houses. Indeed, moving at a normal speed of 25 miles an hour, it takes three-fourths of a mile to stop the Kyushu.
"Because of the mass of a ship, nothing can change drastically," Mr. Band points out.
The Kyushu eases between two dredges, 200 feet apart, which are scooping mud from the bottom of the channel near the Veterans Hospital at North Point.
At 11:30 a.m., the faint outline of an Israeli containership, the Zim Marseille, emerges in the distance. On ship-to-ship Channel 13, Mr. Band radios Avis Bailey, a fellow bay pilot, who is guiding the westbound Israeli ship to Baltimore.
Mr. Band tells Mr. Bailey how much room he will have when he passes the dredges.
"See you on one whistle," Mr. Band said, using an old maritime expression that indicates he is turning to his left and the two ships will be passing each other port to port.
Forty-five minutes later, the ships chug within 100 feet of each other. It is less dramatic, yet far easier, than passing in the narrow C&D; Canal. There, two ships can move simultaneously but only if the combined width of their beams is no more than 190 feet.
Shortly before 1 p.m. Mr. Band calls the Army Corps of Engineers for clearance into the canal.
L "Kyushu at Still Pond just east of Worton Point," he radios.
"One westbounder now in the canal," the Corps official replies. But the canal will be cleared by the time the Kyushu reaches its mouth, and Mr. Band receives the green light to proceed to Arnold Point, 12 miles away.
There, 45 minutes later, he radios again and receives final clearance to approach the canal. As he moves closer, the "Lucky D" tug emerges, pushing a fuel barge southbound.
"Obviously we want to be careful with this guy," Mr. Band said. "You're always very conscious of what you have here if something did go wrong here."
The recent history of oil spills in the United States and elsewhere underscores the importance of the bay pilots' role.
By 3 p.m., the launch boat appears up ahead in the canal. The Kyushu slows to 1 knot and Mr. Band climbs down a rope ladder, with wooden rungs, that dangles along the 30-foot side of the ship onto the side of the waiting launch. In turn, a Delaware state bay pilot climbs on board, as the ship continues its advance to the Delaware Capes.
The launch pilot shuttles Mr. Band to the nearby station house, where a driver for the bay pilots association is waiting to shuttle him back to Baltimore.
And three days later, the phone will ring again in Bill Band's house.
At midnight, the 960-foot Atlantic Compass will be sailing east.