I received an approval to test letter for Domestic Endorsements - Master 500 and Master of Tow Oceans. They said I needed to complete Q124 Nav Gen Oceans and Q127 Nav problems Oceans. I submitted my Celestial navigation/oceans course completion certificate from Northeast Maritime.
NMC sent me my 500 Ton Master Oceans upgrade, but they said that I need to take Q413 Nav Gen Oceans and Q416 Nav Problems Oceans to get my Master of Towing Oceans upgrade.
Is this right? This doesn’t make any sense. I already completed the same exact questions and modules in the celestial navigation course. Thanks to anyone who can shed light on this.
You need to take the complete examination for every raise of grade. You don’t get credit for courses or exams you may have taken in the past. Also, check the approval of that course you took. Every approval of a celestial navigation course specifically states that it is (only) valid for an “increase in scope” (near coastal to oceans) of an existing endorsement. It’s not valid for a raise of grade. For raises of grade, you cannot substitute courses for individual examination modules, you need to take the entire examination, or a course approved for the entire examination.
A few years ago I sat for, I think it was four, new endorsements. I only had to take rules of the road once, but I had to do three chart plots and four nav generals.There was only one endorsement that required celestial. I think it was a total of 13 modules.
The celestial module for Master of Towing (unless it’s changed) is much easier.
As you probably know, you don’t have to take the same module more than once for multiple endorsements on a single application. There’s only one international and inland rules module, all endorsements take the same module. So you didn’t have to take the same examination module more than once. But, in the aggregate, you have to take every module for every endorsement applied for.
Mr. Cavo,
Thank you for the quick response and always being helpful. I’d like to ask one more thing and then I won’t take up any more of your time. I know that sometimes the policies can stray from common sense and I’m willing to accept that and move on if that is the case.
One thing I didn’t mention is that I already held Master 500 near coastal and Master of towing near coastal when I submitted my application for increase in scope to Master 500 Oceans and Master Tow Oceans. If the Celestial Navigation course certificate is accepted in lieu of module Q124 Nav Gen Oceans and Q127 Nav Prob Oceans for one increase in scope shouldn’t it be accepted for the other increase in scope, considering that my approval to test letter required the same two test modules for both “Increases in scope”.