AMSA Master <500 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-M500-Y-M1 · The Certificate

4 lessons

AUS-M500-Y-M1-A The gateway ticket, and why it cannot be skipped Practice in examiner →

AUS-M500-Y-L1.1

What it lets you do

This is the certificate on which you first sign for a vessel. Everything below it is watchkeeping. This one puts your name on the top of the crew list and your signature on the papers, and it is the ticket the industry quietly treats as the real beginning of a career in command.

AUS-M500-Y-L1.2

The sea service

The sea service for this ticket is short and specific. It is also unforgiving about sequence: service performed before you held the qualifying certificate does not count, however good it was.

AUS-M500-Y-L1.3

The courses

The training for this certificate splits in two. There is the **approved course** — the professional syllabus, delivered by an AMSA-approved provider — and there is the **stack of short courses and certificates** you must present alongside it.

AUS-M500-Y-L1.4

The oral, and the paperwork

Everything up to here is collectable: sea time, course certificates, a radio ticket, a medical. The oral is the part that cannot be collected. An examiner sits opposite you and establishes whether you can be trusted with a vessel.

AUS-M500-Y-M2 · Command

4 lessons

AUS-M500-Y-M2-A The step from keeping a watch to carrying the ship Practice in examiner →

AUS-M500-Y-L2.1

The master's authority

A watchkeeper executes a plan somebody else signed. A master signs the plan. The distance between those two sentences is the whole of this module, and most of the oral examination.

AUS-M500-Y-L2.2

Command navigation

As a watchkeeper you executed a passage plan. You were expected to notice if it was wrong, and to call the master. As a master you are the one being called, and there is nobody behind you.

AUS-M500-Y-L2.3

Shipmaster's business

Nobody joined this industry for the paperwork. But the master is the person who signs, and a signature is a statement of fact. Get the ship's papers wrong and the consequences are not administrative — they are detention, fine, voided insurance, and a very short conversation with the Company.

AUS-M500-Y-L2.4

Vessel operations and administration

A well-run yacht is legible. Anybody who steps aboard — a surveyor, a port state control officer, an insurer's expert, a new mate — should be able to work out how the vessel is operated within an hour, from the records. If they cannot, the vessel is not well run, whatever the varnish looks like.

AUS-M500-Y-M3 · The Regulatory Load

4 lessons

AUS-M500-Y-M3-A SOLAS, ISM, ISPS, MARPOL and the Master Practice in examiner →

AUS-M500-Y-L3.1

SOLAS, flag state and port state control

SOLAS — the International Convention for the **Safety of Life at Sea** — is the oldest and most important of the maritime conventions. It came out of the *Titanic* and it has been rewritten by every major casualty since. Nearly every safety certificate on your bulkhead exists because SOLAS says it must.

AUS-M500-Y-L3.2

The ISM Code and the Safety Management System

This lesson explains what the ISM Code requires of companies and masters, covering the structure of a Safety Management System, the roles of the Company, Designated Person Ashore and master, and the certificates and audits that verify compliance.

AUS-M500-Y-L3.3

The ISPS Code and ship security

The **International Ship and Port Facility Security Code** is made mandatory by SOLAS Chapter XI-2. It came out of 2001, and its logic is preventive: identify the threat, assess the vulnerability, and put measures in place *before* anything happens.

AUS-M500-Y-L3.4

MARPOL — the annexes that bite on a yacht

The **International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships** is structured as six annexes, each dealing with a different pollutant. A yacht touches most of them, and the master signs for all of them.

AUS-M500-Y-M4 · Carrying the Ship

4 lessons

AUS-M500-Y-M4-A Stability, emergency, medicine and crew Practice in examiner →

AUS-M500-Y-L4.1

Stability for the master

Most masters will never calculate a stability condition from first principles at sea. Every master must be able to recognise a dangerous one, and must know which of their own decisions move the vessel toward it.

AUS-M500-Y-L4.2

Emergency response, drills and the muster list

When the emergency arrives you will not rise to the occasion. You will fall to the level of your preparation. That is not a motivational poster; it is the finding of every casualty investigation ever written.

AUS-M500-Y-L4.3

Medical care on board ship

There is no doctor. There is you, a medical locker, a satellite connection and somebody who is unwell in a way you cannot immediately name. That is the situation the competence is designed for, and it is why the two Master grades sit a different course to the Chief Mate.

AUS-M500-Y-L4.4

Crew management and the MLC

The **Maritime Labour Convention** is often called the fourth pillar of maritime regulation, alongside SOLAS, MARPOL and STCW. It sets minimum standards for the conditions in which seafarers work and live, and it applies to commercial yachts with the same force as to any other ship.

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

School