[esailor Team]

March 2022
Alan Mchugh
Pass
1hr 45mins

Started off with him explaining how the exam would go, looked at my passport, I showed him around the room and he confirmed that I had a plotting sheet, paper and pencil and a calculator.
We went through buoyage and colregs first:
-Port lateral
-Preferred channel to starboard, if I wanted to into secondary, which side would you leave it?
-East cardinal mark, OOW calls you, heading East and see it
-Lights for vessel aground, would decks be illuminated?
-Towing a vessel more than 200m
For the colregs, he wanted me to act as master
-CBD crossing from port
-Head on (starboard side, nearly ahead)
– Overtaking vessel going into crossing
– Restricted visibility, two targets one starboard bow other port quarter, he gave me option of either drawing out my plot or explaining to him how I would do it, I preferred to draw it myself as it was easier for me to explain. He gave me speed of vessel and time of the plots.

-Joining a ship as master, what statutory certificates would you check?
-You are CM, just taken over and you have a 5 yearly check of lifeboats tomorrow and there has been no prep for it
-Inspections of a wire, where to find info for it
– Passage plan from Dublin to US, what info would you want from captain and passage planning officer
-Drills and timings for them, additional ones for passenger ship
-Lots on stability! Draw a loll curve, what causes loll, how would you rectify it if there were 3 ballast tanks, what navigational actions would you take while correcting it, talk me through what is happening on various points of curve
-Vessel aground, actions as mate and actions of master, forepeak flooded
-X-band is broken, what would you do? You arrive at Port of Refuge after the grounding, they don’t have spare parts for your radar, flag are not extending your dispensation, company have parts for you at next port, action as Master?
-How would you send a distress in A2, wanted to know frequencies
-Fire in engine room, actions as mate
-Hours of rest for a young person

Was wonderful at putting me at ease and gave me plenty opportunity to draw out my thoughts to better explain myself. Said I could do with more work on GMDSS frequencies but that he was happy to pass me. I’m sure I missed some stuff but the major stuff was squeezed in.
Highly recommend group work and getting as many mocks in as possible with Whitehorse, I also did the GMA course which was brilliant

Thank you everyone!!!! I got there eventually!

[Author]

Posts