USCG QMED and the Engine Ratings

AI-drafted catalogue content pending SME review. Endorsement names, sea service and examination requirements change; verify with the National Maritime Center before relying on this for a career decision.

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USCG-QMED-M1 · Getting Aboard

3 lessons

USCG-QMED-M1-A The MMC, the Wiper endorsement, and the true zero point Practice in examiner →

USCG-QMED-L1.1

The zero point

The Merchant Mariner Credential is one document. What you are allowed to do with it is written inside it as **endorsements**. You do not go and get a Wiper. You get an MMC endorsed as Wiper. Everything in this course is an endorsement added to the same book.

USCG-QMED-L1.2

Yacht time counts

Yacht crew are told, endlessly, that their time does not count. It is not true, and the National Maritime Center has never said it. Here is the NMC, in its own publication on crediting sea service:

USCG-QMED-L1.3

How a day is counted

Mariners argue about this constantly, usually because somebody has told them the regulations never mention 360 days. The requirement sections do not — Part 11 is written in months and years. But the **definitions** section does, and it is binding. Cite 10.107.

USCG-QMED-M2 · QMED

4 lessons

USCG-QMED-M2-A The five ratings, and the rung that does not exist Practice in examiner →

USCG-QMED-L2.1

Wiper to QMED — and the rung that does not exist

This is the single most common error in the American engine department, and it is repeated by people who should know better — recruiters, training brokers, crew agents, half the internet. It goes: you start as a Wiper, you work up to Oiler, and one day you become a QMED. That is three rungs. There are two.

USCG-QMED-L2.2

The renaming, and the dead ratings

On 25 November 2024, USCG final rule 2021-0097 renamed several merchant mariner ratings for gender neutrality and eliminated certain QMED ratings from original issue entirely. This lesson covers which names changed, which ratings can no longer be obtained, and how to use these facts to test whether a study source is current.

USCG-QMED-L2.3

Getting the QMED

After the confusion of the last two lessons, the requirement itself is refreshingly short. The Coast Guard wants to know that you have been below, that you are old enough, that you are fit, and that you can pass the exam.

USCG-QMED-L2.4

What the QMED examination covers

This is the part candidates most often get wrong in the planning stage. They ask "what is on the QMED exam?" as though there were one exam. There is not. There is a matrix: subject areas down one side, ratings across the top, and your exam is the column that belongs to the rating you applied for.

USCG-QMED-M3 · The STCW Engine Ratings

3 lessons

USCG-QMED-M3-A RFPEW, Able Seafarer-Engine, and the electro-technical rating Practice in examiner →

USCG-QMED-L3.1

RFPEW — Rating Forming Part of an Engineering Watch

This lesson sets out the RFPEW endorsement under STCW Regulation III/4, covering its two qualification routes, the minimum age, the QMED shortcut, the requirement to hold an underlying national endorsement, and the propulsion-power trigger that activates it regardless of gross tonnage.

USCG-QMED-L3.2

Able Seafarer-Engine

If RFPEW says you can be counted as part of the watch, Able Seafarer-Engine says you are the rating the watchkeeper relies on. It is the top of the support level below and, on a seagoing yacht, it is the endorsement that makes a rating genuinely employable rather than merely legal.

USCG-QMED-L3.3

The Electro-technical Rating

This lesson explains who qualifies as an Electro-technical Rating under STCW III/7, the three entry routes and their sea-service requirements, and the two mandatory approved courses in computer systems and high-voltage power systems, with guidance on when ratings must be carried under 46 CFR 15.1103.

USCG-QMED-M4 · The Engine Room

4 lessons

USCG-QMED-M4-A What a rating is actually expected to do below Practice in examiner →

USCG-QMED-L4.1

Standing an engine room watch as a rating

A watch below is not a shift. A shift ends when the time is up; a watch ends when it is handed over, properly, to somebody who now knows what you knew. Everything else in this lesson is a consequence of that one difference.

USCG-QMED-L4.2

Rounds, readings and the log

Rounds are a route, walked at a set interval, in the same order, every time. The order matters. A fixed route means you notice the thing that has changed, because your eye expects the thing that has not. A wandering route means you notice nothing, because everything is new every time.

USCG-QMED-L4.3

Safety below — the hazards that kill engineers

Engine-room fatalities are not random. They cluster, and they cluster in the same few places, year after year. Know the list, and know the rule that goes with each one.

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Where the QMED leads

Every rung above the ratings is bought with QMED time. That is not a figure of speech. The service requirements for the national engineer grades are written in QMED months, and the mariner who banks them deliberately is the one who arrives at the officer application with the paperwork already done.

Aligned to the published USCG framework. Official source.

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