Entry & progression
Twelve months as the officer in charge of a navigation watch — not as an understudy, not under supervision. In charge. And every month of it must be accrued while holding the Watchkeeper Deck certificate.
The requirement
- Hold or have held a Watchkeeper Deck <3000 GT (Yachts) certificate of competency — or another certificate AMSA considers at least equivalent.
- 12 months of qualifying seagoing service as officer in charge of a navigation watch on vessels 12 m or more in length, of which:
- at least 4 months on vessels 20 m or more in length; and
- at least 4 months on voyages of at least 24 hours duration;
- all of it performed while holding the certificate at (1).
It is measured in metres, all the way up
Every service threshold in MO74 Schedule 2 is a length: 12 m, 20 m. Never a tonnage. This holds at every rung — even the Master <3000 GT ticket asks only for service on vessels of 12 m and 20 m. You do not need to have served on a 3000 GT anything to hold the ticket that commands one. People plan careers around chasing tonnage that the Marine Order never asked for.
How a day is counted
MO74 Schedule 3: if you perform master or deck officer duties for at least 8 hours in a 24 hour period, that is a whole day — and no more than a whole day. Doubling up does not buy you two. If you serve less than 8 hours, you may count the actual hours served plus 25% of that time.
Schedule 3 also restricts the role, not the vessel: service must have been performed as a master, deck officer, trainee deck officer, deck cadet or rating. Nothing in Schedule 2 or 3 says the vessel must itself be a yacht.
Where the service actually dies
Not in the Marine Order — in AMSA's discretion. MO70 s18 allows AMSA to discount all or part of a period of service it considers of little or no relevance to the certificate applied for. MO70 s20 makes service qualifying only to the extent that AMSA considers appropriate. And AMSA says, in terms, on its yachting page: "Service on vessels that spend considerable time in port will not be accepted."
That is aimed directly at dockside and seasonal yacht time. A yacht that spends eight months alongside and four on charter does not produce twelve months of sea service. Plan the boat, not just the job.
WARNING — The sea service letter — get this backwards and you lose the time For an international certificate, AMSA requires the qualifying sea service to be confirmed by a letter issued by the company. Verbatim: "Letters issued on board a vessel by a master will not be accepted."
For a domestic near-coastal certificate, a letter from the master, owner, operator or chief engineer is accepted. This ticket is international. Get the letter from the company, on company letterhead, before you leave — chasing it afterwards is how people lose a season.
CAUTION — Can this 12 months be counted again at Master <3000? Master <3000 GT (Yachts) requires 24 months in charge of a navigation watch on vessels 12 m or more, of which at least 8 months on vessels 20 m or more, while holding a qualifying certificate.
Whether the 12 months you use for this certificate may be counted again toward that 24 months is not stated. MO74 is silent. AMSA is silent. We are not going to guess at it, and neither should you: it is the difference between a two-year climb and a three-year one. Ask AMSA directly, in writing, before you plan around either answer.