For the best answers to all your licensing question — ask an expert.
For assistance assembling your seatime and presenting the most effective application to the USCG for the best possible license – use an expert.
Why waste time? Why settle for free advise (the value of which we all know) from mariners that may, or may not, know the inside outs of USCG licensing peculiar to your situation? Why end up with less license than you are entitled to? Why not have an expert who speaks the USCG’s language representing you?
I am aware of three such licensing experts. There are undoubtedly many more licensing experts available.
Chuck Kaksuka
[B]About Sea K’s Licensing:[/B]
Charles “Chuck” Kakuska is a 25 year veteran of the United States Coast Guard. His last Duty Assignment was as Chief of the Regional Examination Center in Toledo, Ohio. A recognized expert in the field, and President of Sea K’s Maritime Licensing Service, Chuck has over 22 years of Maritime Licensing Experience.
Contact Us
(734) 847-1723
Fax (734) 847-6580
Email: [EMAIL="SEAKsLic@aol.com"]SEAKsLic@aol.com[/EMAIL]
Andy Hammond
[B]Andy Hammond Consulting [/B]for all your Coast Guard credentialing issues[B] call 617.970.7760 [/B]Andy Hammond Consulting is standing by to help you [B]obtain, renew, or upgr[/B][B]ade your U.S. Coast Guard credential and/or[/B][B]STCW-95 endorsement.
[/B]Andy Hammond was the [B]Chief of the U.S. Coast Guard Regional Examination Center /B in Boston from 1998 until September of 2006.
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Problem #356 with the Byzantine bureaucratic nightmare of the licensing system. The notion that professionals would have to pay to have someone “represent” them in order to gain credentials to which they are entitled, is simply ludicrous. I wonder if airline pilots, physicians, lawyers, etc have the same problem…I think not.
[QUOTE=barley;77039]Problem #356 with the Byzantine bureaucratic nightmare of the licensing system. The notion that professionals would have to pay to have someone “represent” them in order to gain credentials to which they are entitled, is simply ludicrous. I wonder if airline pilots, physicians, lawyers, etc have the same problem…I think not.[/QUOTE]
REPLY There is considerable merit to your point of view. However, the reality of the USCG licensing system is what it is. The licensing system is basically adversarial where the mariner must prove to the USCG that he is entitled to whatever he is asking for (assuming he can even figure out what he is entitled to ask for). Going to the USCG without a qualified and skilled representative is like going to court without a lawyer. One might go to court without a lawyer to fight a speeding ticket, but not when the stakes are high. For most of us, the stakes are high with the USCG. The people who are using good licensing experts seem to be getting better license upgrades through creative paths that 99% of us would never have found on our own. The cost of the licensing experts is small compared to our wages and the cost of the classes we must take.
That said, I’ve seen licensing experts screw up too. They do a lot for what little they are paid, but they are far from perfect.
I’m with Tugsailor. Valuable info is worth paying for. Think how much wrong info is put out on this website by folks. Same as paying for someone to do your package. We may only do it every 5 years or so but they do it everyday. By missing something in your package that they would have caught will cost you thousands. Just take upgrade from AB to Mate. Mess up that package and you are delayed 2 months of pay, say $200/day for two months.
Why two months? You send it off and get word at work that you are missing something. You have to work your hitch then run around a do crap when you get off then send it back and wait again while you are back on your hitch for the word to test instead of testing the last hitch you got off. Then there is the fact of folks just spending to much time on there apps and upgrades simply because they don’t know what to do.
Yea, I may have paid $200 to have it done, including the feeds but I can do things at home on my off time that needs to be done before heading back to sea. Time is money in my book and I make more then that a day so money well spent. I would spend 2-3 days getting stuff and looking at the app to see what else I need. I would rather someone just say, give me this and that and you need to take this again within a year or your gonna be hosed. They speak to you in laymans terms also. You look at a piece of paper and it says Form 32/2A, they say get a recomendation letter from your last employer please. Here it is, have them fill it out. (I just made the form up for an example so no need to tell me that form doesn’t exist. It was just an example.)
The other thing is things change and not everyone takes the same route. Everybody was like why you going for unlimited, you only need so and so. Well, because I could thats why, what if later I wanted to do something else. Not everyone has the same background so what they qualify for is different and what they have to do is different. Most folks in the GOM only know one route. Heck 90% of the folks I talked to on my way up couldn’t help me (That’s Captains and folks at the office.) I was even told I couldn’t go the route I was going. What are you suppose to do? Take that answer from you captain who you respect and you think, well he knows because he’s been there, or find out on your own by asking a professional in the subject matter. The Captain may know about running the boat and HIS or HER Lic. but they don’t know the USCG rules like the back of there hand. Heck even the USCG doesn’t.
If you cannot read 46cfr 1-40 and discern for yourself what you are qualified for and go to nmc website to make application you are either too stupid or too lazy to hold a watch on my bridge.
Cajuntugster: down wit dat i iz. But, as Barley said: “The notion that professionals would have to pay to have someone “represent” them in order to gain credentials to which they are entitled, is simply ludicrous.”
I would say it is up to US to demand a change to the system so that WE the payer, user, and the ones regulated by the system can understand it and easily use it. This idea that the USCG knows best is BS. That we have to petition our congressman and write letters to high heaven is crazy. We can’t even be ‘heard’ by the organization that regulates us! We have to use middlemen (congressmen senators) to do it for us. Talk about a system that is haywire.
Unfortunately very few (even amongst the readers on this blog) will take the time to write their congressman on this topic. But this is counted on by the entrenched oversight to ensure their budget existence and even increase.
In my small world the AWO is the companies mouthpiece to DC. There is NO united voice for the mariner. Only fractured Unions and a few sailors who write politicians occasionally.
[QUOTE=tugsailor;77004]
[B]Contact Andy today[/B] to see how he can help you! Also, you can read some great updates on many licensing and regulatory subjects on Andy’s blog at [B]eCaptain! [/B]
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eCaptain… I can tell you already this guys an asshole. You pay him, he comes on [I][B]gCaptain[/B][/I] to ask you guys, he gets back to you.
[QUOTE=cappy208;77111]
In my small world the AWO is the companies mouthpiece to DC. There is NO united voice for the mariner. Only fractured Unions and a few sailors who write politicians occasionally.[/QUOTE]
REPLY All the unions do is conspire with the academies and AWO (boat companies) to keep the licensing regulations they way they are to make it as hard as possible for small vessel mariners to move up to unlimited tonnage licenses — which would enable mariners to leave small vessel operating companies and compete for jobs against the union boys and the academy graduates. Don’t blame the USCG for these stupid regulations, blame the AWO, the unions, and the academies that continue lobby for this mess.
[QUOTE=Mikey;77129]eCaptain… I can tell you already this guys an asshole. You pay him, he comes on [I][B]gCaptain[/B][/I] to ask you guys, he gets back to you.[/QUOTE]
Not true. I know him professionally. He is a smart, together guy. BUT, he did matriculate through the system in Bos REC and knows not just the regs, but where the skeletons are buried.
Again, this 10 year in REC should not be a prerequisite to knowing the regs for our benefit. The regs should be KISS. Instead they seem to be FUBAR.
[QUOTE=cappy208;77138]Not true. I know him professionally. He is a smart, together guy. BUT, he did matriculate through the system in Bos REC and knows not just the regs, but where the skeletons are buried.[/QUOTE]
Maybe he is… but because of his little blog there we spend $500/yr on a-zCaptain.com
[QUOTE=cajuntugster;77106]If you cannot read 46cfr 1-40 and discern for yourself what you are qualified for and go to nmc website to make application you are either too stupid or too lazy to hold a watch on my bridge.[/QUOTE]
Are you kidding me? Your the stupid captain I wouldn’t want to work for. You would rather spend 4 days reading the manual yourself then have the Engineer fix something? Use your resources my man.
I’m not supporting whoever they posted at the top in the OP. Just that its not a bad idea to have a pro do your stuff when you are moving up. If you have been holding the same lic. for 15 years and all you are doing getting a new issue thats one thing. For folks starting out though the CFR’s can be just over whelming. Heck, even to the guys that have been doing this forever have problems with what’s in the CFR’s but they can drive a boat and manage their people.
You remind me with your post of the muscle beach guys. You can’t use my equipment if you can’t lift 500 pounds all the while forgetting that you started out by lifting 100lb.
You don’t know him from a swinging dick but because he makes you the “world leader in maritime and offshore news” spend 500 dollars a year he’s an asshole. What does the G stand for anyway? His E stands for electronic.
[QUOTE=Mikey;77146]Maybe he is… but because of his little blog there we spend $500/yr on a-zCaptain.com[/QUOTE]
REPLY I don’t know Andy Hammond personally, but I know several good mariners that do. Andy came very highly recommended to me. Some of the schools in the Northeast also recommend him. He was very helpful to me and much more than earned the $200 fee that I paid him. However, there was one unusual issue that I had to work out directly with the NMC myself (it required quite a bit of extra correspondence).
I can understand why gcaptain has some heartburn over the “eCaptain” domain name, but that’s got nothing to do with the quality of licensing assistance that Andy provides to mariners.
[QUOTE=Mikey;77129]eCaptain… I can tell you already this guys an asshole. You pay him, he comes on [I][B]gCaptain[/B][/I] to ask you guys, he gets back to you.[/QUOTE]
REPLY Mikey, I did my best to post the contact pages of the licensing expert’s websites. Jewel Smith’s webpage would not post at all, so I just typed her link. I posted Chuck Kaksuka’s and Andy Hammond’s pages just as I found them (the photos on Chuck’s page did not post). I did not write the advertising language that you quoted above — that’s just the way it came along with everything else from Andy’s webpage.
Chuck Kaksuka
[B]About Sea K’s Licensing:[/B]
Charles “Chuck” Kakuska is a 25 year veteran of the United States Coast Guard. His last Duty Assignment was as Chief of the Regional Examination Center in Toledo, Ohio. A recognized expert in the field, and President of Sea K’s Maritime Licensing Service, Chuck has over 22 years of Maritime Licensing Experience.
[CENTER]Contact Us
(734) 847-1723
Fax (734) 847-6580
Email: [EMAIL="SEAKsLic@aol.com"]SEAKsLic@aol.com[/EMAIL]
I had some problems which Chuck Kaksuka sorted out for me, and would happily use him again. It was well worth it, and would certainly recommend him to others.