Sure do. We have four heavy lift McGregor cranes up forward. It took all
of them to get that piece of paper on board. You should see the size of the
suitcase I had to buy to carry it! Actually it gives me some advantages.
Once one of the unlimited tonnage licensed mates finds out you did something
to improve yourself they are much more prone to teach a lot of extras. A
lot of good navigation related tricks of the trade for one, the equivalent
of a full length radar operator/interpreters course, all sorts of extras.
All the extra or left over but still current charts, pilot books etc. come
our way. The two of us who have small tonnage licenses do all or most of
the lifeboat and Rhib Rescue boat work. We work with the charts and chart
updates, normally on a merchant ship only the 2nd mate with the third mates
assisting touch those. Another advantage is interviewing people on
different places in the world you might go one day in your own boat. These
people, over the years, have been to darn near every place in the world.
They'll tell you all the good and bad points of every entrance and every
harbor from doing the "Texas Chicken" in the Houston Channel to where the
best "plage au naturale" can be found and how close is required to get
within 20 power range. Because of my small boat time I get a lot of
questions. "WHAT is that blankety blank expeletive deleted so and so
doing?" It's a fair trade of information.

Cheers and fair winds!

Michael