I had occassion to sit through the last 20 minutes of a presentation by
one of the local "Captain's License" schools to a group of people
interested in meeting the USCG qualifications for
"six pack" and 100-ton certification.

I couldn't beleive my eyes and ears. The rep from the school displayed
the Sea Service form on a screen and began instructing his audience on
how to game the system!

"Be creative" he said. "The Coast Guard wants to work with you to be
sure you qualify for the exam. The Coast Guard wants you to be
licensed. Remember, you can use all your time on any registered or
documented vessel since your 16th birthday as long as you owned the
vessel or can provide the registration number and get the owner to sign
off on your time" (He was corect about time on any registered vessel
since age 16).

"When you fill in the hours, never ever put down that you spent less
than four hours underway. If you think you were out for two or three
hours, round that up to something just over four. 4.3 or 4.5 would look
better than 4 exactly. You don't need to have a log, just use your
memory and write in enough days over enough years that you wind up with
at least 360 4-hour shifts of sea service and be sure that 90 of those
days are within the last three years. Most peole will want to show a
lot more days in the summer months than in December and January."

"If you boat out into any area that would be considered near coastal
rather than inland waters, make sure that you count the entire day as
near coastal service. If you're out of the inland waters for even an
hour or so, make sure that you claim at least four hours near coastal
for that day."

"In this block up here, you will be asked to fill in what your duties
were aboard the vessel. Never put down "engineer", even if that was
your job. The USCG will only allow you to count hours spent as an
"engineer" to apply to your engineer's license, not your captain's
license and once you have declared the time as an "engineer" you can't
go back and refile with another description of duties- you just lose
all that time forever unless you want to get licensed as an engineer.
Make sure that you write in "owner/operator" if you owned the vessel,
or "crew" or "deckhand" if you did not."

"We have a group of people at our school who will review your
application before it goes to the USCG to make sure you won't have any
problems qualifying for a license".

****

Outrageous.
And an insult to generations of licensed masters who legitimately
earned the right to test. It has long been known that sea service forms
are typically filled in with a wink and a nod, but it was still
appalling to actually hear somebody from a licensing school advise a
group: "be creative, round up the hours if need be, and remember the
Coast Guard wants to work with everybody to allow them to test for a
license."

What can "be creative" mean in this context, exactly, other than "lie
your butt off?"

I'm wouldn't want to tar all such schools with the same brush, but in
this specific case the school's policy (as represented by the group
presentation) does a disservice to the entire maritime community and
will certainly put a lot of underqualified people into positions of
responsibility for which they are not prepared.