AMSA Engineer Watchkeeper

AI-drafted catalogue content pending SME review. Sea service and course requirements change; verify with AMSA before relying on this for a career decision.

Free

AUS-EWK-M1 · The Certificate

5 lessons

AUS-EWK-M1-A The first STCW engineering ticket, and the three ways in Practice in examiner →

AUS-EWK-L1.1

What the certificate lets you do

Begin with the fact that catches everyone. **Australia does not issue a yacht engineering certificate.** Not one. There is no AMSA answer to the MCA's MEOL(Y), AEC, Y4, Y3, Y2 or Y1. The word *yacht* does not appear anywhere in Marine Order 72.

AUS-EWK-L1.2

Motor, Steam, or Steam and Motor

MO72 section 8 is short and it is absolute: a seafarer certificate to which the Order applies *must include the kind of propulsion power to which the certificate applies*. There are three: **Motor**, **Steam**, and **Steam and Motor**.

AUS-EWK-L1.3

The three training programs

AMSA does not ask how you learned. It asks which of three named programs you completed. Pick the wrong one for your circumstances and you will spend a year of sea time that will not count.

AUS-EWK-L1.4

Workshop skills, the Training Record Book, and the 36-vs-26-week trap

A *workshop skills equivalent qualification* sounds like a judgement call. It is not. **MO72 section 4 defines it as a list**, and if your qualification is not on the list or approved as equivalent, you do not have one.

AUS-EWK-L1.5

The endorsements, the gates, and the first engineer trap

An Engineer Watchkeeper certificate on its own makes you a watchkeeper. The two endorsements in MO72 Schedule 2 are what make you a second engineer, and then a chief engineer near-coastal.

AUS-EWK-M2 · The Engine Room Watch

3 lessons

AUS-EWK-M2-A Keeping a watch below Practice in examiner →

AUS-EWK-L2.1

Taking over and handing over the engine room watch

The handover is not a courtesy. It is a transfer of legal responsibility for the machinery of a ship at sea from one person to another, and it is the only moment in the watch where everything that is wrong is supposed to be said out loud.

AUS-EWK-L2.2

Unattended machinery spaces — alarms, rounds, and being on call

A periodically unattended machinery space — UMS — is not an engine room nobody looks after. It is an engine room whose supervision has been moved: from a pair of eyes at the console to a monitoring system, an alarm extension and a duty engineer who is responsible whether he is in the workshop, in the mess or asleep in his bunk.

AUS-EWK-L2.3

Watchkeeping standards, records and the engine room log

Everything an engineer does at sea leaves a record, or it should. The log is not administration bolted onto the job. It is the job's memory, and in a casualty investigation it is the only witness that does not get tired, frightened or cross-examined.

AUS-EWK-M3 · The Machinery

4 lessons

AUS-EWK-M3-A Prime movers, fuel, cooling, power Practice in examiner →

AUS-EWK-L3.1

The marine diesel engine

A diesel engine compresses air until it is hot enough to ignite fuel injected into it. Everything else — turbochargers, scavenge air coolers, jacket water, lube oil — exists to let it do that repeatedly, for years, without stopping. Your job is the *without stopping* part.

AUS-EWK-L3.2

Fuel oil and lubricating oil systems

Fuel arrives on board dirty. Water, sediment, and — the one that does the real damage — **catalytic fines**. Everything between the bunker manifold and the injector exists to take those out, and every step of it is under your control.

AUS-EWK-L3.3

Cooling water and seawater systems

The cooling system is the least glamorous and most reliable killer of engines. Nobody was ever congratulated for a clean sea strainer. Everybody has been shouted at for a blocked one.

AUS-EWK-L3.4

Electrical generation and distribution

A modern yacht is an electrical ship with engines attached. Steering, stabilisers, fuel pumps, cooling pumps, control systems and the bridge itself all run on power you make in the machinery space. When the board goes dead, everything goes dead — including the things you need to bring it back.

AUS-EWK-M4 · Systems, Safety and the Sea

4 lessons

AUS-EWK-M4-A Steering, bilge, fire and pollution Practice in examiner →

AUS-EWK-L4.1

Steering gear

A ship that has lost its main engine drifts. A ship that has lost its steering, at speed, in a channel, goes somewhere of its own choosing. That is why the steering gear carries a testing regime that no other machine on board carries.

AUS-EWK-L4.2

Bilge, ballast and the oily water separator

Engine room bilges collect everything that leaks: seawater from glands, fresh water from coolers, fuel, lube oil, hydraulic oil, and condensate. All of it has to go somewhere, and where it goes is entirely your decision — which is exactly why it is regulated.

AUS-EWK-L4.3

Fire in the engine room

Most engine room fires start the same way: a **pressurised oil spray onto a hot surface**. A cracked high-pressure fuel pipe, a failed flexible hose, a loose union — and a fine mist of oil finds an uninsulated exhaust manifold. Ignition is instant.

AUS-EWK-L4.4

MARPOL Annex I in practice — the Oil Record Book

Understand this clearly, because it is counter-intuitive and it is the whole lesson: engineers are very rarely prosecuted for the **discharge**. They are prosecuted for the **false entry** and for **obstructing the investigation**.

Aligned to the published AMSA requirements and the relevant Marine Orders. Official source (AMSA).

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