AMSA Master <3000 GT (Yachts)

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-M3000-Y-M1 · The Certificate

5 lessons

AUS-M3000-Y-M1-A The top ticket, the ladder, and the two ways in Practice in examiner →

AUS-M3000-Y-L1.1

What it lets you do

Marine Order 74 issues exactly four yacht certificates. All four are deck. This is the fourth, and nothing sits above it. Hold it and there is no vessel answering MO74's definition of a yacht that you are not certificated to command, anywhere in the world.

AUS-M3000-Y-L1.2

The ladder, and the Chief Mate trap

Written out, the MO74 ladder is three rungs, not four:

AUS-M3000-Y-L1.3

The sea service

MO74 Schedule 2 sets the qualifying seagoing service for this certificate in one provision, and it has three moving parts: a duration, a role, and two length thresholds.

AUS-M3000-Y-L1.4

The MO71 fast lane — and the contradiction

MO71 is the general — non-yacht — masters and deck officers order. It is the merchant ladder. AMSA publishes an equivalence table that lets merchant officers cross into the yacht system, and at the top of that table the cross is dramatic.

AUS-M3000-Y-L1.5

The courses, the GMDSS GOC, and the oral

The course requirements at this grade are the fullest on the yacht ladder. Read the row for your own certificate and no other — conflating the four grades is how people arrive at the oral missing a certificate.

AUS-M3000-Y-M2 · Ocean Command Navigation

4 lessons

AUS-M3000-Y-M2-A Navigating a yacht anywhere in the world Practice in examiner →

AUS-M3000-Y-L2.1

Ocean passage planning and weather routeing

A passage plan runs **berth to berth** — from the moment the last line comes off to the moment the first line goes on at the other end, pilotage included. Not sea buoy to sea buoy. The groundings happen in the bits people leave out.

AUS-M3000-Y-L2.2

Celestial navigation and the backup with no batteries

Satellite positioning fails in ways that are boring (antenna, cable, power, receiver) and in ways that are not (jamming, spoofing). The dangerous failure is not the one that blanks the screen. It is the one that leaves a confident position on the ECDIS that is forty miles from where you actually are.

AUS-M3000-Y-L2.3

ECDIS at command level — and ECDIS failure

An ECDIS is a type-approved system running official electronic navigational charts, with an approved backup arrangement. Everything else on the bridge that displays a chart is a chart plotter, and a chart plotter is not a legal chart. Know which of yours is which.

AUS-M3000-Y-L2.4

Heavy weather command decisions

Yachts are built light, glazed generously, and fitted with shell doors, tender garages and beach clubs that a cargo ship would never accept. They are also, on a good day, faster than the weather. Both facts should shape your thinking, and only one of them is a comfort.

AUS-M3000-Y-M3 · Shipmaster's Business

4 lessons

AUS-M3000-Y-M3-A The commercial and legal weight of command Practice in examiner →

AUS-M3000-Y-L3.1

Flag, registry and the yacht's certificates

The flag is the law of the vessel. Wherever she is in the world, she carries a body of law with her, and it is the flag's. The register records ownership and mortgages. The certificate of registry is the vessel's identity document, and it is the one piece of paper a port state will ask for before it asks for anything else.

AUS-M3000-Y-L3.2

Charter, the 12-passenger limit, and where a yacht stops being a yacht

Most masters can recite the definition. Far fewer can say what happens the moment it is breached, which is why it is worth walking each limb with a commercial head on.

AUS-M3000-Y-L3.3

Casualty, incident and reporting obligations

The order is fixed, and it is not negotiable. **People. Vessel. Environment. Evidence. Reports.** Nothing on the reporting list outranks a person in the water.

AUS-M3000-Y-L3.4

Salvage, general average, and the master's authority in a crisis

This lesson covers the legal elements of salvage, the no-cure-no-pay principle, Article 14 special compensation, SCOPIC, and Lloyd's Open Form, before explaining general average and how the master's statutory authority underpins every crisis decision.

AUS-M3000-Y-M4 · Stability and the Ship

3 lessons

AUS-M3000-Y-M4-A What the master must know about the hull Practice in examiner →

AUS-M3000-Y-L4.1

Stability at 3000 GT — intact stability and the GZ curve

This lesson explains the GM, GZ curve and key stability criteria that an officer must understand to read an approved stability booklet critically, covering free surface effect, the impact of moving weights, and why unbudgeted loads on a yacht can silently erode the margin the booklet assumes.

AUS-M3000-Y-L4.2

Damage stability and watertight integrity

Water enters a compartment. Four things happen, and only the first is obvious.

AUS-M3000-Y-L4.3

Load line, tonnage, and why a yacht's GT is not its weight

Under the International Convention on Tonnage Measurement of Ships, gross tonnage is calculated from the **total enclosed volume of the vessel**:

AUS-M3000-Y-M5 · Leading

2 lessons

AUS-M3000-Y-M5-A Human factors and emergency command Practice in examiner →

AUS-M3000-Y-L5.1

Bridge resource management, human factors and the culture the master sets

Bridge resource management is not a soft subject. It is the discipline of making sure that all the information available on the bridge actually reaches the decision. On most bridges, most of the time, it does not.

AUS-M3000-Y-L5.2

Emergency command — the first ten minutes

This lesson maps out the command priorities that must be executed in the opening minutes of any shipboard emergency, from sounding the alarm and setting fire boundaries to early distress transmissions and the logic of time-critical decisions under uncertainty.

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

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