So remember we mentioned that Tiffany was off to Fort Lauderdale for a week of training? Well, that training was for the STCW 95, a requirement for any mariner that wants to work on a boat outside of the US, or larger than 100 tons. Now, previously I was only traveling from US port to US port, but now since that has obviously changed, I needed to upgrade my USCG 100 Ton Master to include this endorsement. The STCW is basically a week long course that teaches basic first aid, CPR, firefighting and how to not die immediately on a ship that has problems. You do remember of course that Greg and I are former Coast Guard officers… Yes, we have done all of this before and are trained well beyond the basic level of this course. The challenge is that the Coast Guard didn’t give us the fancy little piece of paper that says we’re good to go. So… Here I am in Ft. Lauderdale.
With some online research, I managed to find a great school that was holding this course during a time frame that fit our schedule. The Maritime Professional Training facility and their instructors were great. Here are a few clips from my classes:
Those awesome, stylish gumby survival suits are the same things that Greg and I had to shimmy into on our first shipboard experiences – the main difference between that time and this one was on our ships they made us jump over the side while wearing the suit! Lots of fun 🙂
So, the great thing about this class was that it wasn’t all just sitting around and listening to a lecture. We got to do stuff! Cool stuff most people don’t get to do! Of course, before they throw you into a firefighting situation, they want you to test out your gear. They gave us SCBAs (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus) for our training. We used these same getups on our ships, so it was nice and familiar to me.
And we got to fight real fires!
All in all it was a fun week for me.
Well, aside from the fact that Florida was freezing cold the entire time! Seriously, there was frost and everything!
~ Tiffany
