3/M Oceans Exam

Maritime Topics 500 Ton Master Upgrade
1

Anyone Tested Recently For Celestial 2/M or 3/M and have any input on where to focus studies?

2

You should prepare to completely solve the sailings:

Great Circle (This includes the vertex and points along track)
Mercator
Mid Latitude
Parallel

You should also be capable of completing a full sight reduction for any body. This includes determining AP, Zn, Hc, and the intercept, as well as plotting the LOP and advancing it.

You will need to compute Latitude at LAN.

Determine the best three bodies for a fix. Using an approved star finder is the easiest method. The tricky part is plotting the planets and the moon on the appropriate overlay.

Identify a single star based on Ho, Bearing, and brightness.

Determine Latitude by Polaris and Zn of Polaris.

Concerning the breakdown of the questions, you should expect something similar to:

  1. Great Circle sailing
  2. Mercator sailing
  3. Mid Latitude sailing
  4. Parallel sailing
  5. 3 body running fix (Plot)
  6. Latitude at LAN and 1 sun line (Plot)
  7. Compass correction using Zn of body
  8. Latitude or Compass correction by Polaris
  9. Best three stars
  10. Single star Identification
  11. Gnomic chart question

The remaining questions will require you to do some portion of the sight reduction process, i.e.:

Determine Hc for a Body
Determine Ho when given index error and Hs
Determine the Intercept
Determine the AP

As long as you can complete a full sight reduction and plot it for any body, and solve the 11 question types above, you’ll do fine and won’t encounter any surprises on exam day.