NI Approval

Well finally after 2 months NI has informed me they will be approving my sea time and issuing my book. I applied under the new requirements, made application by email, paid online, etc. and it took over 2 months so far, add another couple weeks or so for delivery. They are supposed to send me a final email notification of when it is being sent and I hope they tell me my certification number. Then the resume’s will be flying!!!
The new requirements for sea time did not prove much of a problem, other than extending the real time it took to get the 180 days. All in all, it took about a year and a half.(28/14) I legitimately had what they required in order to count a sea day, but it still comes down to the service letter written by your company and the log book entries.
The most difficult part of this process was contacting them, I have no international plan on my cell phone nor from the phone on my vessel. I used their email and had to send multiple inquiries before they would reply. When they finally did reply they told me I needed to send additional information before my application could go further. They had known this for a month or so but never notified me, they just shelved my application. Lucky I had contacted them to check on the status of it or I might never have found out.
Now I am just waiting for the mail, praying it makes it through ok.!

Good luck to everyone else going through this.

Thanks for posting your experience. I just completed my 180 days, then discovered my new build vessel wasn’t in their database for the on line application. Sent them an email several weeks ago and haven’t received a reply.

Yup, I should have started the on line application a long time ago.

Another captain on the same boat submitted his paperwork to the NI last September, and recently heard from them that they were close to processing his app.

[QUOTE=water;63174]Thanks for posting your experience. I just completed my 180 days, then discovered my new build vessel wasn’t in their database for the on line application. Sent them an email several weeks ago and haven’t received a reply.

[/QUOTE]

I had the same problem. I scanned the ships ABS letter showing DP classed and emailed it to them. Two days later my ship was in the database.