The YachtMaster Commercial Endorsement

Over the past year, I have been taking courses to obtain the “Master of Yachts 200gt”, the commercial endorsement of the YachtMaster Offshore certificate. These courses are additional to the YachtMaster Offshore certificate, and enable you to carry out (legal) professional activities as a skipper where RYA training is recognized.

Commercial endorsement is limited to a few restrictions, implicitly dictated by the YachtMaster training you have received. As I obtained a YachtMaster for sailing, my commercial endorsement is limited to sailing vessels (sailboats/catamarans, etc). There are also size and distance restrictions: less than 200 tons, less than 24 meters and sailing within 150 nautical miles of the coast. The distance restriction can be removed if the YachtMaster Ocean certificate is subsequently obtained.

In essence, five conditions must be met for a patent to obtain commercial endorsement. First, a Transport Canada seaman’s number must be obtained. Secondly, a seafarer’s medical certificate attesting to his or her ability to work at sea. Thirdly, you must successfully complete STCW-accredited training in marine emergency measures. Fourthly, STCW-accredited training in first aid at sea. So we had to adapt the plan in real time, which I’ll detail in a fourth text. Fifthly, you have to pass a course on professional responsibilities like Skipper.

I would say it’s a process that requires more time and money than anything else. The courses are not particularly difficult if you have a minimum of skills for school. What is harder is upstream, i.e. obtaining the YachtMaster Offshore. I detail the qualifications required below.

Marine Number

Obtaining a Transport Canada seaman number is an administrative formality. One can write an e-mail with a few pieces of digitized ID and is then given a number. End of story.

The seafarer’s number will be used to compile training, professional certificates and sea time obtained under the STCW Convention.

Medical Certificate

The medical certificate is the result of an examination covering hearing, eyesight, general physical fitness… and the ability to pass through pre-determined-sized hatches (narrow spaces). Only doctors authorized by Transport Canada can issue a certificate of fitness. You need to find one, make an appointment, pay $400, get examined, and if you’re fit, that’s about it.

Safety at Sea Training

Emergency response training is the first course that takes you into the professional maritime world. You must take a course that complies with articles A-VI/1-1 to A-VI/1-4 of the STCW Convention:

1. Individual survival techniques (A-VI/1-1);
2. Fire prevention and fire fighting (A-VI/1-2);
3. Personal safety and social responsibilities (A-VI/1-4);
4. Basic first aid at sea (A-VI/1-3).

The first three are combined in a course offered by the Centre de Formation en Mesures d’Urgence (CFMU) of the Institut Maritime du Québec (e.g. Cégep de Rimouski). It is an 8-day course, from 8 a.m. in the morning to 4 p.m. in the evening. We spend two days in class learning about personal safety and social responsibilities on a boat (emergency procedures, boat call roles, etc.).

We then spend three days in practical fire-fighting and fire-prevention training (we play at being firemen, photos below). Finally, we spend three days practicing ship-abandonment maneuvers on the high seas (liferaft, survival suits, survival craft, etc.). Two photos, taken from the CFMU website, give a good idea of the last six days.

For those of you familiar with Sail Canada’s High Seas Survival Training Certificate, the last few days of training are similar in substance, but CFMU training is accredited under the STCW Convention.

The course structure is geared towards professional activities. In Canada, it’s the merchant navy. So I took this course with several apprentice deckhands who were about to embark on tankers or ferries. The “typical examples” in the course are tankers.

Classroom training is at the vocational secondary level: you sit in class from 8am to 5pm. You do not need to prepare in advance, or read your course notes before going to class, to succeed. You need to sit down, be patient and take note when the teacher says “this subject could be on the exam” (a big sign that it is an exam question…).

Practical training is rich in learning. These include fire control on steel superstructures, extricating people from a fire, organizing a practical fire response plan, donning individual survival suits, inflating, turning and boarding a liferaft, as well as other techniques for survival at sea when without a liferaft (organization in a “plank”, in a circle, etc.).

During my training, some people had difficulty passing the practical parts of fire control and abandon ship. This is partly because they were afraid of water, fire, confined spaces, confined spaces that burn… or confined spaces that burn and are filled with smoke. The fire part is relatively demanding physically, and can be psychologically too. It is also of little use on fiberglass yachts. It is designed for steel yachts (or similar structures). That said, the rest is applicable in all sailing circumstances.

The course costs around $2500 and requires 7 to 10 days in Lévis.

Basic Safety At Sea

This is a two-day course on first aid techniques at sea. It is offered by the CFMU for $400, but can be taken privately for $150. It can be taken over a weekend.

Having taken a “regular” first aid course before having to take this one, I would say it’s the same deal… but a little more expensive. If I had to rethink my path, I would immediately take the Sea First Aid course, without “ordinary” first aid, to go for STCW certification. The course is not particularly difficult.

Personal Practice and Responsibilities

The course covers the administrative and legal procedures associated with operating a commercial vessel. How to assemble the crew, how to think about operations, hiring processes, what the legal standards are for shipbuilding and the different standards for compliance with survival equipment. It’s halfway between a university law course and a university operations management course.

The course is particularly dry. You have to absorb a lot of material on shipbuilding standards, as well as the legal obligations of ships and/or skippers.

I took the course online. The pedagogical approach of the course is to provide digests of legal texts and technical standards, followed by quizzes. Most of the questions required a reading of the legal texts and/or standards, so before the third quiz (out of about ten), I stopped reading the digests and went straight to reading the legal texts and standards. If you are the kind of person who likes to do your taxes, you will enjoy the course. For everyone else… it’s like doing your taxes. It is necessary and useful, but it is not particularly pleasant.

The course focuses on UK laws and standards, but also makes it very clear that a UK ship sailing in another country’s territorial waters is also subject to that country’s laws. They therefore recommend doing the legislative follow-up of another country (e.g. Canada) at the same time as doing the course, to “get used to” doing this kind of research on an ongoing basis.

The course exam is excellent. They provide you with a navigation plan, the specifications of a boat … and they ask you what your legal obligations are in terms of crew, medication on board, skills, etc. It is not easy, but the exercise has the merit of being very close to the real deal.

Obtaining the License

Once all these certifications have been obtained, you send your file and your “old” YachtMaster certificate to the RYA. You can pay for a “fast track” or wait for the normal delivery times. You then receive a new patent containing the commercial specifications.

Valid for commercial use on vessels subject to the codes of practice issued by the Maritime an Coastguard Agency until: [expiration date].

[…] This certificate is valid for use as Master of Yachts of up to 200gt on commercially and privately registered yachts until: [expiration date].

(RYA License Excerpt)

Conclusion

Is a commercial license useful? Only if you want to earn a legal income as a skipper. In itself, the RYA commercial license opens doors abroad, thanks to the RYA’s notoriety, but it’s also a gateway to a proper captaincy title.

YachtMaster training with the RYA (or IYT) is a prerequisite for taking the exams leading to the title of MCA 200 Captain, which in principle allows you to work as captain on any vessel (under 200 tons) and, under the STCW Convention, should be recognized by IMO member countries.