ENGINEERING WITH GORDON

By Chief Engineer Gordon Winchester

Engineer Training – what is being done about it?

In the good old days nobody cared about engineers requiring licenses; it was a trade that passed down from father to son and based solely upon knowledge and experience. It was not until 1954 that engineers became officers in the UK Merchant Marine, before then they were part of the crew and thought of as “grease monkeys working in the pit”. Once engineers became officers, however, they then required an official operating license to carry out their duties effectively and safely.

As for pleasure boats, it was not deemed necessary for engineers to have a license. However, with the advent of super sized, mega sized and, now, even giga sized yachts; the insurance companies started demanding operational licenses for engineers employed on these yachts. The MCA in their Large Yacht Code (LY2), which is a code for vessels of 500 gross tons and above, officially classify vessels as either cargo (less than 12 passengers) or passenger (12 passengers or more), bringing the traditional, pleasure boating, yachting world, into the commercial category.

The traditional commercial method of training engineers was to spend two years at a Marine Training Establishment ashore, one year operational training on one or more different vessels and one final year doing advanced training in a Marine Training Establishment ashore. With the way that the yachting world works, this itinerary of training could not work in this case. So, the MCA came up with an examination grading system, specifically for Yacht Engineers, based upon a five day mandatory training period at a Marine Training Establishment, prior to each examination, and specific amounts of sea time for each grade.

The first problem with this method is that the five day mandatory courses are not long enough to cover all of the individual module syllabuses in the detailed manner necessary to easily pass the examinations, which are getting harder and harder.

The MCA realize that this is impossible and, in their study guidelines, suggest that the engineer completes a self-learning study period of at least SIX WEEKS for each subject prior to attending the Marine Training Establishment for the five day Course and Examination Module.        

The second problem for the yacht engineer is that he/she has to decide weeks, maybe months, in advance as to which course they are going to attend, pay for the course and obtain the necessary course notes for self-learning, also, reading lots of notes without any assistance or company is down right boring to say the least.

In my quest I have discovered, and I am working in conjunction with, a brand new online e-training system called Yotskool (www.yotskool.com) which contains all the necessary MCA syllabus notes presented in an easy to understand way; gives access to a live instructor (during normal US Eastern Time working hours); allows you to take e-notes; contains a number of e-quizzes throughout the different lessons and allows you to communicate with others in the Yotskool community via an in-house messenger system. Yotskool allows you to follow your progress anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

Yotskool does not replace the mandatory five day course for each examination, at a Marine Training Establishment ashore, but it does fully prepare you before hand, such that the mandatory course becomes a revision exercise only and the engineer should be able to pass the examination first time without any bother. 

Enjoy your learning.

Gordon