Entry & progression
Entry: running alongside the sea service. Progression: three safety items and six professional ones. Name all nine.
The safety three — 46 CFR 11.335(a)(3)
- Medical First-aid Provider
- Basic and Advanced Firefighting
- Proficiency in Survival Craft (PSC) or PSC-Limited
Note the difference from the OICEW list at 11.329(a)(4), which requires PSCRB — proficiency in survival craft and rescue boats. The ETO section asks for PSC or PSC-Limited. Read the section that governs the endorsement you are applying for, and do not assume the safety items are identical across endorsements. They are not.
The six professional items — 46 CFR 11.335(a)(4)
NOTE — This is the ETO, in six lines (1) Onboard computer networking and security (2) Radio electronics (3) Integrated navigation equipment (4) Ship propulsion and auxiliary machinery (5) Instrumentation and control systems (6) High-voltage power systems
Read that list as a job description, because that is what it is. It is not a list of electrical topics. It is the systems inventory of a modern vessel, and the person who is expected to understand all of them.
Item by item, and why each is there
| Item | What it actually covers |
|---|---|
| Onboard computer networking and security | The vessel is a network. Somebody has to understand the switches, the segregation, and the fact that a machinery-control network is an attack surface. |
| Radio electronics | The communications and electronics estate — the hardware behind the systems the bridge uses. |
| Integrated navigation equipment | The ETO maintains bridge electronics. The deck officers operate them; somebody else keeps them alive. |
| Ship propulsion and auxiliary machinery | The ETO is an engineer, not an electrician who happens to be aboard. The plant is still the plant. |
| Instrumentation and control systems | Sensors, transmitters, PLCs, loops. The nervous system of an unmanned engineroom. |
| High-voltage power systems | The item that most sharply distinguishes an ETO from a shoreside sparks. |
High voltage is the one to notice
It appears in the ETO officer list at 11.335(a)(4)(vi), and it appears again in the Electro-technical Rating requirements at 12.611 — where an approved course in (i) computer systems and maintenance and (ii) high-voltage power systems is required of the rating. The Coast Guard has decided that anyone working the electrical estate at sea, officer or rating, needs formal HV training. That is a considered judgement about how ships are now built.
Diesel-electric propulsion, azimuthing pods, large hotel loads and battery-hybrid installations all push shipboard distribution above the low-voltage threshold. On a modern yacht that is no longer exotic. HV is not a specialism at the edge of the job — increasingly it is the job.
CAUTION — Approved courses only, and check the current list Every one of the nine items must be Coast Guard-approved training, and providers gain and lose approval over time. Do not book on the strength of a website. Confirm the provider's current approval and pull the NMC's ETO checklist before you spend the money.