The road to a 60tn Masters Certificate

I´m going to blame SALTS for this one again ;) Martyn Clark specifically (not that its a bad thing!) About a year ago I met with Martyn on an unrelated matter and he mentioned the 60 ton certification to me - drawing attention to the fact that it could be done as a home study. This was news to me, for I thought it was only possible to get the cert. as part of a rather expensive Course. I had been interested in expanding my marine certifications ever since I started with SALTS but had not really expected to do much because I couldn´t spare the time (several weeks) or the money (close to $3K) to do the standard Course. Since I had no real need of the cert. apart from personal interest and the chance part-time contract job I has pretty much written it off. Needless to say the possibility of working to obtain the cert. via home study was most appealing.

I started by conduction some in-depth research of the requirements, which I have been told many time seem to change all the time ;) and found exactly what was required. The home study was viable for most of the seamanship but courses were required to obtain a Marine Emergency Duties A2 certificate, Restricted Operators Certificate - Marine Commercial for VHF (ROC-MC) and Marine Advanced First Aid. I also needed to get a medical. That cost About $1500 all together. The home study portion will save roughly $1500 more.

This all started Back in March - so why am I Starting into the story now - well my first exam is on September 15th and it´s Starting to really become forefront.

Anyway - that´s the background - I´ll continue onto details next.

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