Experience or license - What makes a Captain?

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Wookie

Proud to be a Chaos Muppet
Staff member
ScubaBoard Business Sponsor
ScubaBoard Supporter
Scuba Instructor
Messages
55,608
Reaction score
113,634
Location
Portsmouth, VA
# of dives
5000 - ∞
As an aside from the Cathy Church hits Divetech vessel, quite a discussion has emerged about experience vs. having a captain's license. I'll share some personal thoughts.

First world countries require any vessel carrying passengers to undergo some sort of inspection, even if just to verify the proper lifesaving equipment is on board. In the US, any vessel carrying 6 passengers or fewer (12 if the vessel is over 100 tons) may be inspected as an uninspected passenger vessel. Yes, I understand the tricky words, and must be captained by by an Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessels. That license is called a 6 pack, or OUPV. The Coast Guard hates the name 6-pack, BTW. In the UK, 12 passengers is the limit, but they don't have nearly as many small dive boats as you find in the US, since we have a more temperate climate, and quite frankly, boats are built more stoutly.

Many commonwealth countries like Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and the Cayman Islands follow closely the rules of the UK. But it makes little sense to establish a whole licensure program for a small country, so those countries have an endorsement program, that is, if you have license from any country, you can obtain an endorsement to operate a passenger vessel in that country. I have held Bahamas, Marshall Islands, and Panamanian endorsements.

So what does it mean to get a "License"? A license means that you have undergone a physical, drug test, have taken a test to demonstrate your knowledge, and demonstrate that you have 1 year of experience on vessels, and for renewal, 1 year in the past 5 years and 90 days in the past year. An endorsement for a foreign land usually means that you demonstrate the requirements by holding a license in your home country.

What is "Experience"? Well, I started out fishing for my uncle. We had a 65 foot steel trawler in Maine, where I come from a family of mariners. One uncle was a commercial fisherman, one a lighthouse keeper in the Coast Guard, Cousin Stu drives a pilot boat for the Portland Pilots, Cousin Mikey graduated from Maine Maritime Academy with a 1600 ton license, Cousin Anthony with a 3rd assistant Engineer unlimited, Cousin Carrie with a 1600 Master/Third mate unlimited. I am proud that Carrie and I are the only folks who still have licenses, she is an Unlimited Master, I am a 200 ton Master. I also hold a Unlimited Engineer ticket. All of the rest still sail, but no one has a license anymore. Uncle Ben no longer fishes, but his son Mikey hauls lobster traps every day. None of them need a license to do what they do every day, because they aren't carrying passengers or cargo.

I said earlier that you have to pass a test to become a captain. Why is this important? Well, it isn't just moving a boat from place to place, tying up, and dropping divers in the water. It's important (to the Coast Guard, anyway) that you understand the "Rules of the Road", as in how to approach, pass, overtake, or cross another vessel, or a stationary object. That whole stationary object thing is just as important an a moving target. Other important knowledge includes stability (how to safely load your boat, and how to safely put every passenger on the same side when they see a turtle), Deck general (how to tie a knot), Deck Safety (how not to get cut in half when your knot fails under strain) and Navigation General (how to get from one place to another). When you start getting up into larger licenses, you add more stability, and a ton of other classes required to navigate big ships (Radar, Electronic charting, How not to grabass or sexually harass your passengers) etc, but that's beyond the scope here.

I also said you have to be experienced. You need a year (360 days) as a deckhand on a passenger boat to get a OUPV, 2 years for a tonnage license. This apprenticeship program is designed for you to learn the things you need to know before you become the master/operator in command. Do some dive shop owners/boat owners blow off your time? Of course they do, creating the type of captain you've all heard me complain about, Paper Tigers. They have the license, none of the experience. They give the industry a bad name, because they don't have the experience needed to be safe, and they haven't seen other folks mistakes, so they tend to make the same mistakes themselves. Creating paper tigers does no one any good, and leads to accidents. I had a cook who asked me to sign off a year of her time. I did so, as a steward. Steward's department is not a pathway to driving a boat. It's a dead end job, but then, being the cook on a boat has little to do with driving anyway. So you can't just be crew, you have to be crew in a position where you are progressing towards being the mate or master.

When I was a brand new dive instructor and boat captain in St. Lucia, I was handed Boy Blue as my boat captain. Boy Blue was 17, and they were paying him $20 bucks a day. Boy Blue didn't know the first thing about driving a boat, although he was a quick study and learned quickly. Many small islands don't have any standards for who carries passengers.

So in closing, licensed captains have to demonstrate their experience to obtain a license. Experienced captains can tell you all about how experienced they are, but without documentation, they may just be blowing smoke up your butt. But there is no substitute for experience.
 
I once worked for Wookie and he takes his seamanship very seriously, and I can see how a person of his character appreciates the licensing process. However I am going to play devil's advocate for a minute.

While licensing does mean you had to show some basic knowledge and proof of (alleged) experience, it says nothing to your judgement, and how safe of a boat captain you are.

In my diverse career, I have personally worked with licensed nurses who killed patients with medication errors, licensed paramedics who abused narcotics, licensed police officers who were outright felons, and licensed boat captains who I would not let operate a kitchen appliance. In one such case I personally witnessed a dive boat captain on a US dive boat, ask his deckhand to 'keep an eye on things while he laid down because he had taken a percocet. I learned to drive a dive boat because the licensed captain I was DM'ing for was often too drunk to drive himself.

A local boat captain for one of my competitors was a licensed captain. He ran a boat aground by not watching where he was going, and put a massive hole in the hull, enough to sink the vessel. Fortunately since he had just run aground, the boat didn't sink far, but customers ended up being waist deep in water and required rescue off the reef. I know he was licensed because after his job fired him, he applied with me.

I'm all for the experienced seaman.
 
I once worked for Wookie and he takes his seamanship very seriously, and I can see how a person of his character appreciates the licensing process. However I am going to play devil's advocate for a minute.

While licensing does mean you had to show some basic knowledge and proof of (alleged) experience, it says nothing to your judgement, and how safe of a boat captain you are.

In my diverse career, I have personally worked with licensed nurses who killed patients with medication errors, licensed paramedics who abused narcotics, licensed police officers who were outright felons, and licensed boat captains who I would not let operate a kitchen appliance. In one such case I personally witnessed a dive boat captain on a US dive boat, ask his deckhand to 'keep an eye on things while he laid down because he had taken a percocet. I learned to drive a dive boat because the licensed captain I was DM'ing for was often too drunk to drive himself.

A local boat captain for one of my competitors was a licensed captain. He ran a boat aground by not watching where he was going, and put a massive hole in the hull, enough to sink the vessel. Fortunately since he had just run aground, the boat didn't sink far, but customers ended up being waist deep in water and required rescue off the reef. I know he was licensed because after his job fired him, he applied with me.

I'm all for the experienced seaman.
Past service is never a guarantee of future performance. And I agree with everything you say. But when some doofus shows up on the dock and shows me his license, I at least have a starting point.
 
I agree that a license is a starting point....no guarantee that the person won't screw up, but at least they have a known level of training/experience. In British Columbia, where I live, you have to take a course/pass an exam to operate a boat above a certain size. Does this guarantee anything....only that the person understands the basic rules of the road which IMHO is better than nothing.
 
Licenses are more for government and insurance than for the real world. Still probably "almost" guarantees at least some level of experience.
 
The thing with licenses, tickets, certificates of compentancy is that they can be cancelled or suspended if the holder is found to have done something wrong. Of course to be truly effective owners need a way of confirming the license is still valid.
 
Interesting post to read, Wookie. I started logging my time in case I ever decide to pursue a license -- unlikely but possible.

Most people don't know how it feels to be ultimately responsible for the safety of others at sea, people who in most cases have absolutely no idea what sort of hazards the sea still brings, even in this modern age.
 
..... But there is no substitute for experience.
And no substitute for a background check by phone call/etc. All the log books, dive patches, C-cards, licenses, & ratings don't mean squat until your on the phone speaking to their reference to hear if the reference would "re-hire" or "re-dive" with them again. So many tip toe around that question without saying 'absolutely yes'.
 
And no substitute for a background check by phone call/etc. All the log books, dive patches, C-cards, licenses, & ratings don't mean squat until your on the phone speaking to their reference to hear if the reference would "re-hire" or "re-dive" with them again. So many tip toe around that question without saying 'absolutely yes'.
I never had an issue giving or getting an honest reference for crew. My wife would overhear me on the phone say “and you know what else he/she did?” And say “but you can’t say that”. There are some terrible crew members out there.
 
I am licensed to operate a boat in NY where we had one for many years. Grew up fishing in Shinnecock and Flanders with my dad. I would never consider myself qualified to operate a boat here with customers on board as I simply don’t have the experience or skill set to do so. I wouldn’t hire me either and I don’t know of any colleagues here in the dive industry (cannot speak for all water ops) that would be satisfied to send their boat out without knowing it was with someone who was qualified to do so. I have been to some destinations where that simply was not the case. Some of the worst boating I have seen was among fellow pleasure boats on Long Island specifically on holiday weekends. While they are not commercial, they are out on the water with way to many friends and family on their boat, having a whale of a time and risking the life of everyone on their boat and everyone around them as well. Most of those folks may have an official piece of paper but it doesn’t mean they should be at the helm. For me experience is what it is all about. I would be happy to have Wookie come and operate our boat but would still want him to spend some time with local experience just to get a feel for the area where we operate With all the reef and structure it is the only way to keep guests safe.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom