[esailor Team]

I set up my workspace in the living room with plenty of time to spare. The examiner logged on about ten minutes before the start time so we started to work through the prep work (MGN69, put your phone in the other room, show me the room, confirm you’re using the app and not the browser etc). He let me know that his supervisor was monitoring and a junior was sitting in but neither would be getting involved. We then launched into it:
Started off being placed on a VLCC:
• How would you maintain a cargo watch?
• What dangers would you look out for?
• What systems are in place?
• How do you ensure safety within the tanks?
• Where and how is inert gas produced?
I started to lose my way at the last one but seeing as I’d already talked about LFL/HFL we moved on.
Vessel is leaving port. You get to the coast and the compass dies. There hasn’t been a compass error done in a week.
• How would you fix your position?
• What are compass errors used for?
• Why do you take them and when?
• Where would you find deviation?
• Complete this compass error (given Compass bearing, deviation, variation)
• What methods would you use for celestrial nav?
• What is a sextant used for?
• What are the correctable errors?
• Given a handful of images to read the readings of.
After that we moved on to general bridge talk. I can’t remember the exact order so I’ll try and make the memories fairly logical.
• What nav equipment do you have on the bridge?
• How do you receive weather updates on ship?
• What does your weather software look like? (seemed like a more chatty question tbh)
• Shown me some weather / pressure charts and asked me to talk about them in general.
• What are the necessary navtex selections?
• What publications do you carry?
• How would you update the Admiralty list of lights and fog?
• Tell me about NTM and the contents of the Annual NTM.
• Where and how many flares did you have on ship?
• What would you do if the manufacturer changed?
Then he changed tact and bought up a couple of chart images.
• Shown me a light and asked me to describe it.
• Asked me about Nominal Range (without naming it)
• Shown me a tidal diamond and asked what it is.
• How to use Admiralty tidal atlas.
And that, broadly speaking, marked the end of the general knowledge. He then shown me some images of bouys (Safe water, east cardinal, emergency wreck) before me moved onto lights. Format wise, it was very similar to the generic flipcards:
• CBD (>50m, underway and making way)
• VEIF (<50m, underway not making way, with gear laying more than 150m)
I was surprised how show that section was. We went onto COLREGS next. Again, very much like the flashcard:
• Open water, PDV on PDV, V/L on our STBD side.
• Open water, PDV on PDV, V/L on our PORT side.
And here is where it started to fall apart.
• Shows me a picture of a TSS with us proceeding along the lane and a PDV crossing on our port side. Asked for general information on TSS use. Asks what we would do.
• Flips to CBD in open water, port side, asked for action. Little bit of discussion there about what rules apply.
• Go back to TSS, asks what would happen if the VEIF from earlier was crossing. Little discussion.
• Back to the CBD, asking what we’d do again. I stuck to my answer, thinking he was trying to throw me.
After that he shown me a picture of Stevensons screen, a few questions about how the bulbs are used and what it means, before switching topic to restricted vis:
• What would you do encountering restricted vis?
• What rules are in use?
• What sound signals would you sound?
At this point he says that they’re going to log off for a few minutes, discuss the exam and get back to me. A couple of minutes later he returns and tells me where I failed. It wasn’t a bad exam (there were a few improvements in the general knowledge but it’s incredibly rare for people to get through it without exposing holes in their knowledge there) but he wasn’t convinced I had a strong enough understanding of the differences between rule 18 / 8f (keeping out of the way vs impeding). Apparently he was trying to help jumping between the questions but ultimately I just found it confusing and slipped up. I can’t fault how it the exam was handled – he was fair and kept it fairly relaxed, but it’s still a shame.
If I was going to offer some advice to anyone taking their orals soon:
– If it’s online, treat it like a normal orals exam. There was very little difference once we got into it.
– Take a deep breath and stick to an order when answering lights / bouys / colregs questions.
– Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know (but you’d look in xxx document). Admitting a lack of knowledge is better than bullshitting.
– Practice with other people.
– Practice speaking out loud, especially if you’re outside of the college system.

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