I’m applying for a license upgrade next year and I’ve recently relocated to San Diego. Is there a good school on the west coast that provides the now required STCW revalidation classes? Specifically one place that offers revalidation classes for Basic training, Advanced fire fighting, proficiency in survival craft, and RADAR observer. I know of TRL in San Diego but their offerings are limited.
It would also be helpful to know if there is a good west coast school for adv. shiphandling, adv. stability, adv. meteorology, and SAR.
TRL is limited? they offer most classes twice a month.
There is also maritime institute in point loma, however I am not privy if they have the refreshers and/or revalidation courses.
in general they focus more on the lower level stuff though, but it wouldn’t hurt to check with them.
you can get advanced firefighting on the navy base with military sealift command however i have heard its become hard to get that class, because they need to take msc sailors first. el camino college in torrance offers some classes but its hard with them to get their minimum required students.
i have been to both trl and maritime institute and I would prefer trl. they have their shit together a little better IMO.
The NMC approved course list has become useless. We use to be able to search the database by course or school or location. Now all they have is a PDF of 1700 page printed list of schools. This is another thing that the imbeciles at NMC have screwed up royally.
Not useless. Just incredibly difficult to use, but it may work better than a web search.
Download the PDF and start using lookup functions for key words (I.E. CA might pull up California based schools).
And, if if you find a school advertising classes and they are not on the list, challenge them to show you the course approval letter before you spend your time and money.
I’m not saying the USCG website and NMC are all fine and dandy, but it’s there and you might as well see what you can use.
I learned this the hard way…at this point considering how much time and money is at stake ask to see the approval letter regardless of what the list says.
Hello, PMI in Seattle offers all of those courses as well as license prep. You can find more info on our website www.mitags-pmi.org or call our registrar Mary McGhee at 206-838-1126
Ok, maybe limited wasn’t the right phrasing. Maybe more like “TRL doesn’t seem to offer exactly everything I want in a nice little package, how dare they”. Though I did just receive an e-mail from them saying they expect to be approved for an advanced firefighting revalidation course by September so that’s all the revalidations covered by them now. I took my ECDIS class there last year and it went very smoothly. I’ll look forward to taking their classes again especially since now they might be out from under the airport flight path.
I’ll probably end up doing just that.
Thank you everyone!
PS that list is ridiculous to try and use even with ctrl F