well if anyone is wondering; yes your time at piney point does count. yes, you will need to argue it with the coast guard, or explain to them that the time at piney point is counted as 3 for 1 days, thereby i had 540 days of seatime after graduating, and i could of started taking my tests about 18 months ago… since i thought it was only good for 360.
anyway, if you are a piney point graduate, and you want to hawsepipe; come to MPTusa, they have the best teacher, Andy. He’ll be retired soon, so get him while you can for T-Nav and C-Nav. That’s all he teaches now.
also if you aren’t sure about your seatime from your apprenticeship; send a “record request, complete copy” to the coast guard and you’ll get the application Piney point sent to them on your behalf, which states your seatime as 540 days, qualifying you for the Ab-Limited and Able seafarer deck after you graduate. Take that record, and go ahead and apply for your Ab-Unlimited when you get the seatime.
hope this shows up on google so it helps someone like me who couldn’t get any straight answer and had to figure it our for myself.
also, your representative at piney point can help you with your application, so if you run into problems tell her to contact your evaluator and sort it out.