Hey,
I’ve got a question I was hoping one of you could answer.
I work for a commercial dive contractor as a construction diver. I have my merchant marine document. The tug captain for our company told me that any of my time in the water or on the dock would count towards seatime with the CG. I was wondering if this was true and how I should go about getting this time validated.
On a side note, I was curious what kind of employment I can get with just a regular Ordinary Seamens card. Eventually, the dive work slow down and I will need something for a couple months to keep the money coming in…
We’ll have to wait for either Mr. Cavo or the former USCG evaluator to weigh in here to get the official answer, but I’m pretty sure that unless you have deck specific duties, your dive time will not count.
I’m a little short on time right now so I can’t dig through the cfrs, but I did find this on the NMC FAQ page about upgrading to AB:
The term “service on deck” means service in the deck department in work related to the work usually performed on board vessels by able seaman and may include service on fishing, fish processing, fish tender vessels and on public vessels of the United States.
By the way, just because dive vessels aren’t mentioned doesn’t mean you can’t get qualifying sea time on them. But your time does have to be on deck, not in the water. And I’m pretty sure they will want to see some proof of a certain percentage of time working on deck, vs. diving, if you handle multiple roles onboard, as I seem to recall a similar question from someone working as a naturalist for a small cruise line that did some small boat driving. They had to prove that they their job required a majority of time actually working on deck and boat driving to get sea time.