The Value of an Advisor, August 31, 2026

Courtesy of Allen Davis, CFP®

There is a vessel that defies logic. It is the MSC Irina, and it makes no sense that it floats. Imagine you're out in a small recreational boat when the Irina passes by. The first thing you notice is the height — nearly 300 feet tall. Then the width — roughly 200 feet across. And then the length. It just doesn't end. At nearly 1,300 feet long, the ship stretches longer than four football fields.

The Irina carries more than 24,000 shipping containers, stacked 26 high. It weighs over 240,000 tons, costs roughly $200 million to build, and can carry cargo worth billions of dollars. Somehow, it floats. Somehow, it moves. And somehow, this floating city crosses oceans every day.

Now imagine you're the captain.

You must navigate storms, schedules, congested waterways, other vessels, and eventually the most dangerous obstacle of all — land. Specifically, ports. Massive, complex ports in places like Shanghai, Busan, and Antwerp.

How does one person possibly know how to navigate all of them? The answer is fascinating.

In short, they don't.

When a ship like the Irina approaches port, the captain hands over the keys.

Waiting offshore is a harbor pilot. These remarkable and often unheralded professionals spend their careers mastering a single harbor — every channel, current, tide, shoal, and turn. They race out by boat, climb aboard via a ladder swinging against the hull, walk into the pilot house, and guide a vessel worth billions safely to its destination.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the jumping-off point for today's analysis.