How to Hawsepipe - The Big Jump, QMED to 3AE

This article is intended for the Modern Marine Engineer who is contemplating becoming and Officer, a Hawsepiper. It is also for the laymen that is doing the right thing by researching a career goal. If this is your first time to HowtoHawsepipe and you're trying to get started with a career working at sea, we would encourage you to read the previous article “How to Hawsepipe – The Beginnings” first, which lays out a path to get to where this article will pick up on. Here we will discuss how to transition from QMED/RFPEW to 3AE Unlimited/OICEW.

Before we begin, we would like to make this one thing clear if you're going to learn anything from this Article; Do your own homework, read and understand the CFRs and don’t trust anybody that can't give you advice without also producing the proof in the rulebook. As you will see, we will give you a lot of tips based on our own experiences doing this, they are our opinions and not the only way of doing this obviously. However, as far as the requirements and guidelines are concerned, you will see that we can back them up with the regulations as well,

If you have found this article, the chances are you have been doing a lot of research as to how to actually make this transition. Chances are also good you're feeling a bit overwhelmed with all of it and don’t exactly know where to start. We can relate to that, here is what we learned by making the jump ourselves along with the lesson learned and a few tips to make this process go as smoothly and quickly as possible for you.

To recap from the previous article here are 5 simplified steps to becoming an engineering officer. the latter of which we are going to discuss more in depth in following pages.

The Beginnings

1) Obtain your Entry Level Credentials.

2) Build your Seatime in the most time efficient manner.

3) Stop and determine if this is the right career for you, it may not be.

The Big Jump

4) Begin your STCW classes - OICEW

5) Obtain your Domestic and International Licenses

So without further a dew lets dive a bit deeper into the nuance of the last 2 steps.

4. Begin your STCW classes - OICEW

OICEW or Officer In charge of the Engineering Watch will be the biggest hurdle to cross for you, it is also the last one and where most people throw in the towel. The worst part of that is that after giving up they become jaded, depressed and unsatisfied with their careers at sea, because they know they are capable of doing the job but “can’t get a license”. I have seen individuals who are extremely intelligent and capable of becoming Chiefs and Captains give up because it seems too daunting to overcome all at once. Breaking this up into smaller goals was how I was able to fly through this stage with little reason to stop. It really was easy in every sense of the word. It occupied very little of my time overall, I even did it as a new father and husband, which was a very big motivator for me as well.

Below is a list of all the courses and assessment that are required to go from QMED/RFPEW/AB-Seafarer to 3AE unlimited HP/OICEW. You will see that the biggest requirement comes from OICEW. But luckily, you can start on these well before you are all allowed to take your USCG tests. I suggest you begin them as soon as you begin Sailing as a QMED and the sea service clock for 3AE/OICEW begins counting down for you. Did I mention that they are the Perfect license prep courses around since the final test of each class is from the actual USCG 3AE Test! Get these classes out of the way before you test, it’ll save you from wasting anytime by studying the same dated and bullshit riddled USCG questions twice!

For Domestic 3RD Assistant Unlimited HP Motor

Course Name	Online Option	Man hrs / Days	Approx Cost	Notes / Total Days + Weekends
First Aid	No	..	..	Covered in Basic Training
CPR	No	..	..	Covered in Basic Training
Basic Fire Fighting	No	40 hrs / 5 Days	$900-$1200	Covered in Basic Training - 5 Days
Advanced Fire Fighting	No	32 hrs / 4 Days	$1200-$200	4 days

For STCW OICEW 750KW or More

Course Name	Online Option	Man hrs / Days	Approx Cost	Notes / Total Days + Weekends
​Assessments / Competencies	No	NA	NA	NVIC 17-14
Engineering Resource Management (ERM)	No	40 hrs / 5 Days	$1250	5 Days
Engineering Terminology and Shipboard Operations	No	40 hrs / 5 Days	$1000	Sometimes built into Elec Mach. too, 5 Days
Motor Plants	No	120Hrs / 5 Days	$4000	3 Wks / 19 Days
Auxiliary Equipment	No	120 Hrs / 15 Days	$3500	3 Wks / 19 Days
Electrical Machinery and Basic Electronics	No	160 Hrs / 20 Days	$4000	4 Wks / 26 Days
Control Systems	No	160 Hrs / 20 Days	$4000	4 Wks / 26 Days
Advanced Fire Fighting	No	32Hrs / 4 Days	$950	4 Days
Basic Fire Fighting	No	NA	NA	Covered by Basic Training
Leadership and Team working	No	8 Hrs / 1 Day	$325	Consider taking Leadership and Managerial instead. this would cover you for the next upgrade after this as well. It is 35Hrs / $1200
Proficiency in Survival Craft	No	32 Hrs / 4 Days	$900	4 Days
Medical First Aid Provider	No	24 Hrs / 3 Days	$950	3 Days

So your probably saying to yourself about now, “That is ridiculous! That’s way too much! Its so Expensive! Ill be stuck at this crappy job forever mopping decks cleaning bilges or working at McDonalds! I don’t stand a chance to get all that done! fuck the IMO!”

Well, you’re not wrong, it is ridiculous, and it is way too much. But lets not throw the baby out with the bath water here, remember the more difficult something is, the less people will do it, the more your income will end up being.

I would also like the put this expense into a different light for you, so hear me out here. As a sailor, you really need to know what your time is worth monetarily speaking. You are selling yourself to a ship or company after all. Even though you are getting paid 8-12hrs a day, you are spending 24hrs onboard right? You should know what your day rate is, and what your goal should be. For some positions (definitely not all or even most), you will get what’s called “day for day” or even time, meaning for everyday you work, you get one day off. If you earn $1000/day at sea, but you don’t get paid vacation, then you are in turn making $500/day or $20.83/hr for 24 hrs/day even when home, not bad.

Now with this in mind, what will you pay yourself to go to school and become a Licensed Marine Engineer? Lets do some simple math and get a ballpark hourly rate for you to contemplate.

If the complete cost of schooling is $23,000 for all the classes, you allow yourself $100/day for a room, $50/day for food and $3000 total for travel (both may vary depending on where you live) all that equals out to be $45,000. If you were to add up all the class hours plus 8hrs/day on the weekends as well, for the classes that go for 3 to 4 weeks. You will get approximately 130days or 1040hrs. Divide your total cost of $45,000 by 130 total days, this equals $43.26/hr for an 8 hr day or $14.40/hr if you go by a 24 hr day method.

Are you worth $43/hr? The chances are pretty good that if you have gotten this far, you most certainly are. If you are to look at industry wages, this is a very common base rate salary for Third Assistants. My very first 3AE job at MSC, which has some of the lowest salaries around was for $36/hr base and $61 for OT, which equaled out at the end of the year to be and average of $52/hr. After a year I was sailing as Second Engineer and things increased very quickly from there. My last unlicensed job was with a “high-end” Oil company where I was making approximately $105,000/year which was about $290/day and I worked 7 months a year. Within 3 years of getting my license and working at MSC I had more than doubled my salary as an Oiler,(And also happily left that horrible pit of despare, but more on this in another post).

From one side of this mountain of bullshit, it seems too much to overcome, trust me I am with you there. But from the other side its an absolute no brainer, I mean with less than 5 month of schooling you could make over $1000 per day (potentially). Did I add that you are still able to work and make money while you do all this! Im sure if we were to do the math again with the salary you are already making in mind, the numbers make even more sense.

I can assure you this is mountain of bullshit is not impossible; I did it and can assure you I have a very average (at best) IQ. I don’t regret an hour of the time I invested in myself, I now make twice the National average household income for the USA, I work 6 months a year (or less) and have lived in Asia for almost a decade now and I’m still in my early 30s. I also love my job as an Engineer, I couldn’t see myself doing anything else honestly, except maybe flip burgers…..

5. Obtain your Domestic and International Licenses

Here it is, the final step to doing all this, you’ve taken all the courses you have all the assessments and you have the seatime in the bag. The last step is to apply and test. Fortunately for you, this will be the easiest step, but test anxiety might not let you think that way.

It turns out that the USCG has made this process much easier for you by consolidating the some 10,000 questions to somewhere near a 1/4 of that now. With updated illustrations and some of the ambiguity in many questions being “tidied up”, This along with some very powerful study methods on the market now, you’ll be able to pass it with a perfect score.

Once you have collected all the documents required for OICEW and 3AE you can make your application. The NMC checklist for these are a great place to start, however you should always verify it with the actual CFRs, more specifically 46 CFR, Chapter 1, Subchapter B, Part 11. You should remember that the NMC is run by humans, humans make mistakes and the NMC has been known to make some doozies that can really lay wreckage to peoples livelihood. The CFRs are the rule book the NMC enforces, you don’t want to be blindsided by something that wasn’t in the checklist, like it was in my own case in 2018 which set me back 3 months from my original completion goal date.

We also suggest getting every license and endorsement you can at this stage, you never know how it could help you in the future and you can get several at this point. It also looks better on resumes, it could never hurt having more Licenses than needed. DDE unlimited, Assistant engineer and Assistant engineer OSV or some that you will qualify for at this stage.

It can be a little complicated at this point to know exactly when to start doubling down on your studying, we are all different in this regard. But a good general starting point is probably about 6 months out from your anticipated test date. You may need to call or Online chat with the NMC to get a current expected processing time, it seems to change with the weather. Because of this we think 6 months out is a good place to begin. Ideally you would be ready to test the day your approval letter is sent in the mail, but depending on if your at sea or not you may not be able to physically test.

For the USCG testing portion of this, we like to suggest 2 different study methods. Our favorite is from Maritime Advancement. MA has created a study program locked onto a USB drive, the best part about this is how they have set the program up. You are able to Flag questions and study only the flagged questions. I would always start by going through the complete question bank and flag each question I got wrong. Lets say that was 60%, I then begin studying the question and only the correct answers, then periodically test my self with Mock 75 question tests. I was able to then reduce the flagged questions down to approximately 10% of the complete test bank. Once I had gotten to this point I scheduled to test. You are all but guaranteed to pass the test with 90s studying this way. A tip here is to know what time of day you can pay the closest attention to the questions. I myself do best within the 1st hour of waking up, studying these questions was my wake-up routine. Some friends of mine cant do this and were able to do much better in the late afternoon. The key is to find a good time of day, then make that your job and stay consistent with your study times. It might start at 30 mins/day 6 months out and increase to 2hrs/day 1 month out which is how I managed to ace all my tests. I had gotten so good at this, my last USCG for First Engineer I completed all 5 modules in less than 2 hours the first scheduled day, piece of cake when you’ve memorized 90% of the material.

You may be the kind of person that does better studying passively on your phone, well there is an app for that, its called Sea Trails. This is an excellent way to study as well. I liked to use the app for when I was stuck in the Chow line onboard a fully manned T-AKE, the wait was painful somedays, but at least I was able to make good use of this time by blowing through some test questions.

If your someone who thinks they will study better with the printed books, cool, but the chances are you would still do better with the formatting of these two programs rather than reading them in books. Also, depending on which study book you get, certainly the used ones on ebay, you might not actually have the most up to date questions. Like I mentioned before the USCG trimmed allot of fat several years ago and going with a reputable program that is actively being managed and updated is a great way to get past this. We would encourage you to try them as well and see what really works best for you. We are not affiliated with either, but greatly appreciate quality when we see it.

That’s it! Really not that bad actually. We hope this gives you a better understanding into what it takes to Hawsepipe these days, coming from individuals that have ACTUALLY done it themselves. This article is by no means all-inclusive of everything relating to your MMC and the process to become a Hawsepiper, since many variables for you personally will play a role in all this. I would hope this article does however help you make the decision to do it, pull the trigger and commit fully. The USMM is in need of Sailors, and even more so than that, good quality and highly experienced ones even more so. The average age of the US merchant marine is 47, which I’m sure is skewed to the low side by all the academies pumping out 22 year old grads that spend less than a year sailing, if that. This means that all our experienced Old salts will be on the way out in the next decade. This also means wages will continue to rise along with quality of life onboard and at home, now is the best time to make this choice.

If you would like more information on how we could help make your personalized career plan, please send us an email and lets get the ball rolling, the biggest step in this entire process is going to be the first one, after that the rest are will be a cake walk. Nothing would make us happier than to lend a hand in your journey up the ladder. We can assist you with Career advice, Resumes, Studying tips, Applications and much more, if you need it.

Our only goal with HowtoHawseipe is to give you the tools you need to accomplish your career goals at sea by giving you advice earned with our own experience. We want nothing more than to see more quality sailors and engineers out there, since the chances are good we’ll all end up on the same boat eventually, this industry is smaller than you may think.

Best wishes to your success!

The HowtoHawsepipe Team