Hi all,
I just wrote an email to a friend with advice on how to approach the mate 1600 NC exams, and figured some other folks out there might find it helpful as well. I didn’t see any recent threads on this so figured I’d start a fresh one. As a hawsepiper myself, I had to figure out all this on my own, so hopefully this can help someone.
For tug workers, the benefit of the 500/1600 versus the 200 is that by virtue of getting it, you can also get you Mate of Towing endorsement (assuming you have your TOAR completed), which you will need. I haven’t heard of any mate jobs on tugs that don’t require this. So, if you started this career late like me, and you are trying to hustle, this will expedite your way into the wheelhouse, or at least give you the license so you can have a chance at it.
If you go the route of Mate 200, you would need to get Apprentice Mate Steersman then Mate of Tow, which requires 540 days for AMS and then another 360 while holding the AMS for the Mate of Tow.
Mate 500/1600 requires 720 days(assuming you are working on big enough boats), so you can get this done 180 sea days earlier, which is surely significantly more once you count in Coast Guard processing time. Also, once you have your 1600, it opens a lot of doors for advancement.
Studying for these exams is no joke though, so here’s where that email I wrote comes in:
First off, once you have your seatime letters, you can submit those to the coast guard for your “Approval To Test” letter. Once you get this, it’s valid for a year, and you submit it to the REC you want to test at. Dealing with the coast guard is a pain in the ass, so I used a licensing consultant service that was super worth it. These guys will set you straight and take care of everything, and they know people personally in the Coast Guard so they can get things done as fast as possible. Also, they can get things in the pipeline ahead of time, so once you have your seatime letter they can just submit it and you will be ready to test, which will save you a couple weeks. It’s not super cheap, but worth the time you will waste otherwise trying to figure everything out. Highly recommend: https://diamondmarineservices.com
You will also want to make sure you get your TOAR done in the meantime so that when you pass your exams you will also get the Mate of Towing license automatically. I was lucky to have captains on my boat who were qualified to fill out the TOAR. If you don’t have someone who can sign things off, there are classes available you can go get it done at. This is important because the 1600 ton license isn’t good for much if you don’t have the Mate of Towing endorsement as well. Make sure to let the consultant know you want this as well if you end up using him.
So basically for 1600T Near Coastal, you will have to take 6 exams: Rules of the road, deck general, deck safety, nav general, Chart plotting, and navigation questions. The first four you pretty much just need to expose yourself to all the possible questions, and then the last two are more process oriented. You need to pass with 90% on RoR, Chart Plot, and Nav Problems, and then 70% on the other three.
Each section has a question bank of several thousand questions, but many questions are repeated in the sense that they’re just worded slightly differently. Still though, it’s a LOT of material. To study I primarily used a website called LapWare. It’s kind of expensive at $100/month, but is kind of the gold standard in the industry.
There are other study tools, specifically I have heard good things about Sea trials. It looks like they improved it recently so it might be worth checking out. The good thing about Lapware is it has all the questions and all the solutions worked out. If you end up going with Lapware, it would be worth sitting down to show you how to best use the website, as it’s pretty old and unintuitive. If you sign up, he will send you a big .zip file full of searchable PDFs and other things that are very useful for studying.
My study technique was to first study everything but the Nav problems. This meant just banging out multiple choice practice problems, and then practicing the chart plot toward the end(I had a good foundation in chart plotting already from my 100 ton masters class). I then went and knocked out all of those modules on my first exam date knowing I would probably fail the Nav problems(which I did), then afterwards just focused on that section all on its own. This worked out pretty well for me(you can retest twice):
One huge tip I learned on my own is that the Coast Guard practice exams are worth their weight in gold. I saw probably 20-30% of questions on the exams that came directly off of these practice exams. I’ll attach the ones I have going back a couple years in a google drive folder.
Another good site for learning, especially the chart plotting and Navigation problems, is this one: Coast Guard License Preparation - THE PRACTICAL NAVIGATOR
I also did my Radar Unlimited class through this website, which you will need to have to work as a mate. Also, I emailed him for study advice and he gave me some really solid pointers, I’ll forward that to you as well.
Finally, here’s a youtube channel I found to be really useful especially for the Navigation problems section: @deckprep
That’s it, cheers everyone!