Entry & progression
Five instruments carry the whole of Australian seafarer certification. Learn which one governs you and you can read the rules for yourself. This lesson also shows you where AMSA's own website gets it wrong — and why the legislation wins.
| Order | Title | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| MO 70 | Seafarer certification 2014 | The machinery — applications, sea service, AMSA's discretion |
| MO 71 | Masters and deck officers 2023 | The general (non-yacht) deck ladder |
| MO 72 | Engineer officers 2014 | Every engineering certificate. All of them. |
| MO 73 | Ratings 2014 | Ratings |
| MO 74 | Masters and deck officers — yachts 2015 | The four yacht deck certificates |
| MO 505 | Certificates of competency — national law 2022 | The entire domestic ladder |
MO74 — the yacht order
Marine Order 74 is the one that matters most to this audience, and it defines its own subject. A yacht, per MO74 section 4(1), is a vessel that is less than 3000 GT; is for commercial use for sport or pleasure; does not carry cargo; and does not carry more than 12 passengers. All four conditions. The Order adds that a yacht need not be designed to carry sail, and may be a training vessel, a sail training vessel or a short range yacht.
That definition is doing real work. It is not decoration. It decides whether MO74 applies to you at all, and — as you will see in Module 4 — it is the boundary that a Certificate of Recognition for a foreign yacht ticket is confined to.
AMSA's own pages cite the wrong Order
This is not a rumour. AMSA's certificate pages for Watchkeeper Deck less than 3000 GT (Yachts) and Master less than 3000 GT (Yachts) both open by citing Marine Orders 70 and 71. MO71 is the general, non-yacht deck order. It is the wrong instrument. Only the Chief Mate less than 3000 GT (Yachts) page correctly cites MO74.
CAUTION — When the website and the legislation disagree, the legislation wins AMSA's own disclaimer says the Marine Orders govern. So when a web page cites MO71 for a yacht certificate, the page is wrong and the Order is right — but you should still verify anything load-bearing with AMSA directly, because a citation error on a public page is a signal that the page may be stale in other ways too. Read the instrument on legislation.gov.au. It is free, it is authoritative, and it is not that long.
The instruments have defects too
Reading the legislation does not mean trusting it blindly. MO74 carries at least three known drafting errors. Schedule 4 clause 4.4 refers to a "Watchkeeper Deck less than 30000 GT (Yachts)" — an extra zero; no such grade exists. Schedule 2, for Master less than 3000 GT (Yachts), cross-references a sub-subparagraph that is not in that provision. And MO74 uses two different measures of length in one instrument: the 12-metre and 20-metre sea-service thresholds are overall length, while the "less than 24 m" in the Master less than 200 GT (Yachts) endorsement is load line length.
None of that makes the Order unusable. It makes it a legal document rather than a brochure. Read it as one. If a provision reads as nonsense, it may simply be nonsense — and that is a question for AMSA, not something to resolve by guessing.
Learn the six names. When someone tells you what the rule is, ask which Order it comes from. If they cannot say, they are quoting a forum post.