Zenith Ocean – Commercial Shipping Navigation

I’m not a financial advisor, and would recommend that anyone reading the below information researches it fully or consults a registered financial advisor or tax advisor to ensure that they are getting accurate information.

It’s very easy to lose sight of your finances as a seafarer, but if you’re employed and paid from an offshore company you need to be aware of the requirement to submit a ‘Self-Assessment’ on an annual basis, and failure to do this can cause you a great deal of trouble. It could be embarrassing to explain to your employer that you can’t embark on your next voyage because you are in court for tax evasion.

Seafarer Earnings Deduction

It is your responsibility to declare your earnings, however you may be eligible to a tax advantage of the ‘Seafarer Foreign Earnings Deductions’ or SED for short.

In very broad terms, the seafarers’ FED concession means that the income of anyone employed on a ship is free of UK income tax provided they spend at least half the days of a qualifying period of at least 365 days outside the UK and not more than 183 consecutive days in the UK during that period. Location (inside or outside the UK) is measured at midnight for each day and a day counts as spent outside the UK if it forms part of a voyage to or from a foreign port.

In 1991 following the Falklands war, it was realised by the Government of the day that there was a strategic case for measures to encourage shipping companies to draw their crews from seafarers in the UK, who would be willing and able to serve in time of war, and to this end relaxed the rules giving tax relief to seafarers working mainly overseas.

Basic information

The Seafarers’ Earnings deduction is a 100% relief from tax on your earnings as a seafarer if your job entails working outside the UK. A brief summary of the rules are as follows:

• You can qualify for the Seafarers’ Earnings Deduction as a seafarer if you perform all your duties on a ship, or you perform most of your duties on a ship and the other duties are incidental to the duties on the ship.
• The word ‘ship’ is not defined in tax law, but ‘offshore installations’ used in the offshore oil and gas industry are specifically identified and are not regarded as ‘ships’ for the purposes of the Seafarers’ Earnings Deduction. These include:
  • fixed production platforms
  • floating production platforms
  • floating storage units
  • mobile offshore drilling units (both semi-submersibles and jack-ups)
  • flotels.

HMRC’s new guidelines published February 2009 regarding offshore installations go further to include those vessels that are being put to a ‘relevant use’ and at the same time are ‘standing or stationed’. See HMRC EIM33193 and HMRC EIM33109 for definitions of ‘relevant use’ and ‘standing or stationed’.

• SED can only be claimed by seafarers’ who are resident/ordinarily resident in the UK.
• SED is allowed against earnings as a seafarer that fall within a Qualifying Period, and includes leave pay immediately following a Qualifying Period.
• The Qualifying Period must be 365 days or more and must not contain more than 183 consecutive days in the UK. At the end of each period outside the UK, the total days spent in the UK must be less than half the total days in the Qualifying Period. The Qualifying Period must start and end with a day outside the UK.
• In each tax year, there must be at least one foreign port visit for each employment.
• A day of absence from the UK is one where you are outside the UK at midnight.
• You can include holidays abroad to make up the Qualifying Period.

There is a lot of guidance on the HMRC website to help you determine whether you are eligible and how to prepare a self-assessment.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/helpsheets/hs205.pdf and http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/relief-ship.htm .

You can also use companies such as Seatax Ltd, SK Tax or Blue Riband Tax.

What is absolutely critical for claiming the tax relief is proper record keeping, the onus is on you to prove that you are eligible, and if you aren’t, then you could be forced to retrospectively pay tax on your income. If you are away at sea, make sure that someone at your registered address keeps all your mail on a safe place to ensure that you have the correct documents. Before signing off a ship, photocopy the freeboard pages of the official logbook.

I would highly recommend starting a spread sheet with details of where you are every day and what dates you are in the UK, a simplified diary of sorts.

Keep the following documents:

• air tickets or other travel vouchers, boarding passes
• hotel bills or other receipts
• passports and visas
• seafarer’s discharge book
• freeboard logs of the ships you carried out duties on
• Salary statements

You do not need to submit these documents with the tax return, however a certain percentage of applications are investigated. Your case could be randomly investigated and you should submit be able to readily submit these.

You also need to be aware that as a seafarer you can pay National Insurance contributions. If you want to be eligible for a Full State Pension, you can voluntarily make payments. See the below link.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/seafarersni.htm

Stocks, Shares and Trust Funds – Invest using an ISA

ISAs are tax favoured savings and investment accounts. You can use them to save cash, or invest in stocks and shares. The maximum you can put in to an ISA is £11,520 in the tax year 2013-14, up to £5,760 of which can be saved in cash.

You don’t pay any tax on the interest or dividends you receive from an ISA and any profits from investments are free of Capital Gains Tax. But this does mean that you can’t use losses on ISA investments to reduce Capital Gains Tax on profits from investments outside the ISA.

If you wish  to invest, weather its earning interest on cash or investing in the stock market or funds, then even as a seafarer you can do that within the wrapper of an ISA. Making your investments within the ISA mean that any interest or dividends that you receive below the ISA threshold will not be taxable and you will not even have to declare them which will heavily simplify your ‘Self-Assessment’ Tax return.

Alternatively you can also invest in Premium Bonds, and also gain tax relief on the returns/winnings that you may obtain, whilst also not having to declare this on your Self-Assessment.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/taxon/savings.htm

Rental Property

You can invest in a rental property and avoid tax on the earnings that you receive in the rental income. Whilst you are claiming the foreign Seafarer Earnings Deduction, you still have your personal tax free allowance of 8105 pounds (2012-2013) or 9440 pounds (2013-2014) on the income. You may also be able to offset the tax liability against the interest paid on your mortgage repayments in addition to deductions for allowable expenses.

Pension

What happens if you don’t pay tax?

If you don’t pay tax you can still pay into a personal pension scheme and benefit from basic rate tax relief (20 per cent) on the first £2,880 a year you put in. In practice this means that if you pay £2,880 the government will top up your contribution to make it £3,600. There is no tax relief for contributions above this amount.

Essentially this means, that by investing into a pension 80 pounds, the government will add an additional 20 pounds of tax relief, even though you don’t pay tax. If your company offers you a pension where they will match your contributions to a certain level, then you are effectively getting a pay rise by accepting this. Even by investing a small amount, over a long period of time you have gained additional income for your retirement.

It is recommended that you whenever you get a pay rise or promotion, you put 50% of the promotion into savings or a pension, and you will never notice the difference in your wages.

Foreign Earnings Deduction
3.28a Individuals qualifying for the 100% foreign earnings deduction, which applies to certain employees working outside the UK (seafarers only from 17 March 1998), are still eligible to contribute to a personal pension scheme for any tax year in which they have relevant earnings chargeable to UK income tax.
Contributions are paid net of basic rate tax, and are limited to the higher of the earnings threshold and the relevant percentage of net relevant earnings from a basis year, in the usual way (see paragraphs 4.9 and 4.10).
Any questions concerning an individual’s liability to UK tax should be addressed to the Tax Office dealing with that individual’s tax affairs.

Another great issue of ‘The Navigator’ has been published on the Nautical Institute website. Produced between the Royal Institute of Navigation and the Nautical Institute, ‘The Navigator’ brings articles relevant to actively serving Junior Officers in the Merchant Navy.

This months articles include Collision Avoidance, an interview with Samantha Mason (a recently qualified 2nd Officer) and the use of radar in navigation.

Download here: http://www.nautinst.org/download.cfm?docid=702FCCC5-6187-40D6-8D5BABD714095B29

A new publication has been launched this month (October 2012), and will be published three times a year, and appears to be very relevant to young and modern navigators. I received a copy in the Nautical Institutes Seaways magazine, and was quite impressed with it.

One of the more interesting articles in it is by Dr Andy Norris FNI FRIN who makes comparisons between airline pilots and marine navigators, and draws parallels between their methods. I personally find this quite interesting as in addition to my career as a navigator, I’m also a qualified Private Pilot and have spent a lot of my life around aviation including the commercial side.

Many of the articles in publications such as Seaways by the NI or those by the Royal Institute of Navigation aren’t relevant to the day to day duties of those in Junior Officer roles at sea.
The latest copy can be downloaded online, however unfortunately it appears to only be available in black and white.

http://www.nautinst.org/download.cfm?docid=6295ABA1-DA57-4428-87ACC1EF14B0467F

T’s and P’s are an annoyance, in addition to being time consuming to apply to each chart. If you have internet on board there is a way to make your life easier.

You can visit the UKHO website, and type in a list of chart numbers, then allow the website to generate a list of all the Temporary and Preliminary Notices for those charts. So once you’ve planned a voyage, put in your list of charts for that passage, and print out a list of the T’s and P’s to review and file away the print out in your Passage Planning Folder. Easy

1. Visit www.NMwebsearch.com
2. Search for Updates by Chart Number
3. Enter all Chart Numbers for the passage
4. Select T or P NMs Only
5. Press View Selection

You can also use this website to quickly and efficiently search for historic ordinary Notices to Mariners by Chart Number if you missing when performing your corrections.

NM Web Search – UKHO

Admiralty Digital Catalogue

Another wonderful and useful tool is the Admiralty Digital Catalogue. This piece of software is free and can be downloaded from the UKHO website here:  http://www.ukho.gov.uk/ProductsandServices/ADCatalogue/Pages/Home.aspx

You can use it to assist you in selecting charts for voyage plan, in addition to managing and ordering charts. If your chart supplier also uses this software (check, as many do),  you can e-mail your supplier directly from the software with your requisitions.

The Admiralty Digital Catalogue simplifies the passage planning process by making the identification of T&P NMs relevant to the intended voyage quick and easy. The Catalogue allows T&P NMs to be displayed geographically, searched, viewed either individually or as a user-defined group, saved and printed.

The file is 55mb, and can downloaded without any registration or fees. So is well worth a look.

Navarea Warnings & Coastal Warnings.

Do you want the latest Navarea Warnings and Coastal Warnings without having to work through the Sat C and navtex printouts on the bridge. You can access them all online at :

www.gmdss.org and the also the UK Specific Coastal Warnings at http://www.ukho.gov.uk/ProductsandServices/MartimeSafety/RNW/Pages/Home.aspx

Weather Fax

All the Bracknell weather faxes are now online here: http://www.weathercharts.org/ukmomslp.htm

But who on earth wants these in black and white when NOAA produce better ones in colour online.

Favourite Weather Sites

• http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/
• www.windfinder.com
• www.magicseaweed.com
• http://www.grib.us/ Download this free software, and access the raw met data to determine spot forecasts.

Immigration

One of the required skillsets in Australia is for Ship’s Master (231213), Ship’s Officer (231214) and Ship’s Engineer (231212). With pre-requisite qualifications and experience in these careers, you can gain points for either a fully independent migration visa such as the new subclass 189 visa or the sponsored visas such as 190 and 489.

The process, which is applicable from July 2012, requires you to obtain a Skills Assessment and any other requirements before applying after you which you make a pre-application using the SkillSelect process before being accepted to formally apply for the visa.

For many career options it’s very easy, you send off some paperwork and can obtain a Skills Assessment for your qualification through the post. It’s not so easy for seafarers.

Skills Assessment

To obtain a Skills Assessment for seafarers you need to firstly send photocopies of all your pertinent certificates, in additional to company letters (not sea service testimonials from the ship) for all the companies that you’ve worked for using AMSA Form 12.

Then if you AMSA decide that you’re eligible for the Skills Assessment, you will receive a letter allowing you to book an Orals Examination in Australia. Yes that’s right, even with an MCA Certificate; you will have to travel to Australia to take an Oral so that you can obtain the Skills Assessment. Without completing the Oral you cannot apply for the Visa, and if you apply for the visa before you have the Skills Assessment and subsequently obtain it, you will have your visa application cancelled and will need to re-apply. When in Australia, you will also need to obtain an Australia Medical Certificate, again the first medical certificate MUST be obtained in Aussie, although subsequent ones can be made overseas.

http://www.amsa.gov.au/Marine_Qualifications/Immigration_Qualification_Assessments/

Once you have received the Skills Assessment from the AMSA you can apply for your visa, and if you are successful you can then apply for your ‘Certificate of Recognition’ allowing you to work in Australia.

The Offshore industry in Australia is desperately looking for full unlimited Masters, Mates and Chief Engineer licenses. There is also a shortage of eligible Class 1 Masters applying for trainee pilots job, so despite a long process, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

UPDATE – 8th July 2012

Just an update, the present cap for the year 2012-2013 ANZSCO code 2312 Marine Transport Professionals for Skilled Visas is 540 Visas.

This code 2312 includes the following occupations:

• Master Fisher
• Ship’s Surveyor
• Marine Transport Professionals
•  Ship’s Engineer
• Ship’s Master
•  Ship’s Officer

Planning

In June 2011 the UK Hydrographic Office distributed a survey consisting of 59 questions on perception, awareness and understanding of the various methods for data quality representation on charts, covering both paper and electronic types.

The results were issued in November last year and can downloaded here: Survey Results

Some of the most interesting facts from the survey are listed below:

• 27% of respondents didn’t use the source or reliability information on the charts
• 25% of respondents didn’t use the Zone of Confidence information
• 66% of respondents didn’t understand the meaning of a Dotted Danger Line Symbol
• 84% didn’t understand the meaning of a sounding in an upright font
• 57% could not understand what a ‘bar above a dangerous wreck symbol’ meant
• 77% of Electronic chart users did not use the CATZOC (Zone of Confidence) information on their electronic charts.

Since the survey was released, I’ve made more of an effort to work with newly qualified and junior officers onboard to educate them in how to determine accuracy on both Paper and Electronic Charts.

I strongly believe that there is shortfall in what is taught in the colleges, at least in the UK, about Electronic and Paper Chart Quality indicators.

Paper Charts

Source and Reliability Diagrams

The method that most people are immediately aware of is the Source and Reliability Diagrams which appears in the corner of the chart, where you can usually identify the dates, scale and type of survey for various parts of the chart.

Source Data – Admiralty Chart

Zones of Confidence

The next method is the Zones of Confidence diagrams (shown below), which in a similar format break down the chart into sections and identify the quality of data in a very simple format.

Both of these methods are fairly common, and most people I’ve spoken to seem to have a reasonable understanding of how these work, since they are fairly self-explanatory.

Zone of Confidence – Admiralty

When presented with this information, it helps you decide on your safety margins, clearances and under keel clearance limits for the relevant part of your voyage. By adjusting your limits accordingly, you are far less likely to have an unexpected encounter with the underwater terrain.

Broken Depth Contours / Broken Coastline

Solid line depth contours are derived from intensively developed hydrographic surveys, whereas the broken contours relate to questionable data and may be inaccurate.

Dotted Danger Lines

Reported but not confirmed sounding or danger.

Discontinuity between surveys

Notes related to lack of survey

PA, PD, ED, SD Abbreviations

• PA Position Approximate
• PD Position Doubtful
• ED Existence Doubtful
• SD Sounding Doubtful

Rep’d Abbreviation

Reported with year of report, but not surveyed. For instance this could have been reported by a ship and sent in using the form in the Notice to Mariners.

Upright (hairline) sounding

Upright and hairline soundings are approximate.

Discoloured water legend

The legend ‘discoloured water’ appears on many charts, particularly those of the Pacific Ocean where shoals rise with alarming abruptness from great depths. Most of these legends remain on the charts from the 19th century, when very few deep-sea soundings were available and less was known of the causes of discoloured water. Only a few of the reports of discoloured water have proved on examination to be caused by shoals; the remainder have been caused by such things as plankton and cloud reflections.

Potentially Dangerous Wreck

Least depth unknown, may be potentially dangerous to surface vessels.

Bar above a Dangerous Wreck symbol

Wreck, least depth unknown, but considered to have a safe clearance to depth shown.

Electronic Navigational Charts

I believe that electronic charts are more likely to give the user a false sense of security, the data always appears in the same format as though it’s a guaranteed authority, yet can be leading you astray. The lack of understanding is clearly apparent in the survey results.

I’m presently using the Konsburg ECDIS system where it’s quite easy to obtain the CATZOC information, by selecting ‘Chart’ and then ‘Legend’, whereafter you are immediately presented with the CATZOC information for the area and scale of chart that is visible on screen.

CATZOC

Category of Zone of Confidence: This is almost identical to the Zone of Confidence in the paper charts, with the same ZOC including A1, A2, B, C, D and U. It makes it incredibly easy to make a quick decision on your limitations and safety margins. The main issue is learning how to find and interpret this data on your on ECDIS system, and how readily it is presented to the user.

The allocation of a ZOC indicates that particular data meets minimum criteria for position and depth accuracy and seafloor coverage defined in this Table. ZOC categories reflect a charting standard and not just a hydrographic survey standard. Depth and position accuracies specified for each ZOC category refer to the errors of the final depicted soundings and include not only survey errors but also other errors introduced in the chart production process. Data may be further qualified by Object Class “Quality of Data” (M_QUAL) sub-attributes as follows:

• · a) Positional Accuracy (POSACC) and Sounding Accuracy (SOUACC) may be used to indicate that a higher position or depth accuracy has been achieved than defined in this Table (e.g. a survey where full seafloor coverage was not achieved could not be classified higher that ZOC B; however, if the position accuracy was, for instance, ± 15 metres, the sub-attribute POSACC could be used to indicate this).
• · b) Swept areas where the clearance depth is accurately known but the actual seabed depth is not accurately known may be accorded a “higher” ZOC (i.e. A1 or A2) providing positional and depth accuracies of the swept depth meets the criteria in this Table. In this instance, Depth Range Value 1 (DRVAL1) may be used to specify the swept depth. The position accuracy criteria apply to the boundaries of swept areas.
• · c) SURSTA, SUREND and TECSOU may be used to indicate the start and end dates of the survey and the technique of sounding measurement.

What is Risk?
The ISO 31000 definition of risk is the ‘effect of uncertainty on objectives’ and when talking about health and safety is a product of the probability of a hazard resulting in an adverse event multiplied by the severity of the event.

ÓK, after reading that definition, does it still make any sense? Probably not.

Risk Assessment

Let’s take an example. In the UK, on average 4000 people per year die in their homes, and of those people 1000 of them die from falling down stairs.

So from this we can conclude that the home is a dangerous place and that our stairs are especially dangerous.

So we have a risk that involves a hazard; namely falling down the stairs, a severity which is ultimately death and a likelihood, which bearing in mind the UK population is around 62,000,000 people of which an average of around 1000 per year die falling down stairs, is pretty low.

If we were to base our decision purely on the severity, we’d have to ban stairs altogether, which isn’t practical. So we have to determine an acceptable level of risk, and when the likelihood of the accident is low, we have to say that it is an acceptable risk. That doesn’t prevent us from putting control measures in place which could include banister rails (maximum width of stanchions so children don’t fall through), maximum spacing and height of stairs, not polishing the stairs and the list goes on.

So now you need to apply this to jobs onboard ship, you need to determine what the hazard is, then determine the severity of the risk and the likelihood. The process is the most important, whilst you will see lots of tables and matrix which help you to determine whether a job is safe or not, the reality is that taking a few moments to analyse the job is the primary objective. You then follow that up by deciding what control measures you can put in place to make that job safe.

Conclusion

The Risk Assessment is a process which lets you stop and think logically and methodically about the job you are about to embark on, don’t let the filling in of paperwork detract from the purpose of the Risk Assessment and use the time to discuss with other people involved in the job what the concerns are and how you make the job safer.

Monitoring the Airband radio on your ship.

SOLAS Chapter IV requires that Passenger Ships carry airband radios, ideal for use when assisting in Search and Rescue situations, or even for the routine Medevacs that occur on many of the passenger vessels.

In addition, many yachts which operate with helicopters, or offshore vessels including standby, Dive Support Vessels and more all have radio equipment for communicating with helicopters which will be landing onboard.

Most of the vessels I’ve sailed with which are equipped with airband have fixed units on the bridge and on many of these vessels they are switched off except for when they are needed, which in my opinion is a waste of a valuable piece of equipment.

In the aviation world the frequency 121.500 mhz is the aircraft equivalent of Channel 16, and is a channel used for emergencies and maydays. I’d definitely urge all ships, if they have an airband, to leave it on 121.5mhz with the volume set to high. In the unlikely event that a mayday does occur, hearing those transmissions and being able to respond quickly could be the difference between life and death. Also bear in mind, that most ships which carry the airband radio, and much more equipped then most to deal with medical emergencies.

For vessels who operate in the oilfields, it would probably be better to leave the radio on the local ship-air helicopter frequency that is in use, and yes it could be a little annoying hearing some of the chatter of helicopters operating to other rigs, but if an emergency happens, you’ll be ready to respond or relay the message quicker.

Officer Recruitment

Here are a few of the recruitment websites that have remained in my favourites for a while. I’ve dealt with most of them personally and they seem to actually come up with jobs. Clicking through their websites you’ll find most of the vacancies advertised online, but this isn’t always the case, and some of the best jobs are ones which require someone at short notice and won’t even be advertised. If you are looking for work, applications to the following companies will come up with the positions very quickly.

1. www.seamariner.com
2. www.clyderecruit.com
3. www.faststream.com
4. www.nuwavepersonnel.com
5. http://jobs.nautilusint.org
6. www.jobs-at-sea.com
7. www.shiptalkjobs.com/
8. www.genesis-personnel.co.uk
9. www.marinerresources.co.uk
10. www.shippingjobs.com

Cruise Ship Specific

Quite a lot of recruitment is going on for Officers in the Cruise Ship sector at the moment. There seems to be a strong push for getting British Officers onto some of the cruise lines, but with the present state of Western economies this doesn’t seem to be reflected in the Salaries and Conditions unfortunately.

Disney is recruiting and can be contacted by e-mailing DCL.MTO@disney.com , Disney have introduced two new ships (one last year, and one this year), and are rapidly expanding.

Viking Recruitment www.vikingrecruitment.com, who show most of their jobs on their www.jobs-at-sea.com website are recruiting for quite a few different cruise lines including Holland America Line, Windstar, Seabourn and Hebridean.

Seamariner (www.seamariner.com) occasionally gets a few jobs in for the cruise liners, and has recently been recruiting for Thomson and Saga.

Carnival UK, consisting of P&O, Princess and Cunard amongst others, is often recruiting through their own portal www.oceanopportunities.com and also through the P&O Website on the Careers section.

Royal Caribbean RCCL, RCCL do recruit British Officers and need to be contracted directly, but the salaries tend to be at the lower end of the market. There does however seem to be scope for rapid promotion there. Contact FNilsen@rccl.com

Cruise Ship Salaries

Whilst conditions vary, the following salaries are pretty much the high end of the salaries in the major players. Based on 2012 information.

• Captains £55,000 – £75,000
• Chief Engineer £52,000 – £71,000
• Chief Officer £42,000 – £48,000
• 1st Engineer £36,000 – £49,000
• 2nd Engineer £34,000 – £47,000
• 1st Officer £32,000 - £43,000
• 2nd Officer / 3rd Engineer –   £30,000 – £41,000
• 3rd Officer / 4th Engineer – £22,000 – £28,000
• 4th Officer – £20,000 – £25,000
• Electricians – £20,000 – £49,000
• IT Officer – £31,000 – £38,000
• Comms Officer – £24,000 – £29,000
• Security Officer – £19,000 – £23,000
• Environmental Officer – £34,000 – £43,000

Offshore/DP  Salaries

Offshore Salaries, particularly in the DP sector vary greatly ranging from £100 to £1000 per day for DP Officers and Captains on vessels such as Jack Up Rigs and Anchor Handlers, particularly with the more reputatable companies.

Superyacht Salaries (Euro)

Superyacht salaries are amongst the highest in the industry and vary a lot. The below is an average monthly salary based on a 4:2, 3:3 or 2:2 working rotation which is becoming more popular on the larger yachts (the top 40).

In addition to the below contracts there are often benefits such as business class flights, bonuses (which can often exceed the salaries depending on the owner or charterer), and sometimes even shoreside accomodation, schooling and more.

Whether the yachts are under the Large Yacht Code or full Class 1 vessels, the complexity and the requirements mean that Merchant Officers, particularly those with a cruise ship background, are becoming more and more necessary for this type of work.

• Captain €120,000 - €300,000
• Chief Officer €84,000 – €110,000
• 2nd Officer - €72,000-€90,000
• 3rd Officer  €48,000 – €60,000
• Bosun €36,000 – €55,000
• Deckhand €24,000 – €36,000
• Chief Engineer €96,000 – €120,000
• 2nd Engineer €84,000 – €110,000
• 3rd Engineer €72,000 – €96,000

Superyacht Agencies

1. www.wilsonhalligan.com
2. www.jobs-at-sea.com
3. www.superyachtjobs.com
4. www.dovaston.com
5. www.insull.com
6. www.ycocrew.com
7. www.luxyachts.com
8. www.ypicrew.com
9. www.bluewatercrew.com
10. www.jf-recruiting.com

Cadetships / Apprenticeship

If you’re looking for a cadetship, visit www.careersatsea.org where you’ll find information and a list of companies providing sponsorship. Regardless of what kind of cadetship you desire, the competition is now tougher than ever, and I’d recommend applying to all of the companies and taking up the interview offers. Being offered the job, doesn’t mean that you have to take it and it’s always better to have multiple job offers to choose from.

Quick Guide – How to determine the  Compass Error by Amplitude?

Compass Error by ‘Amplitude’ is a method of very quickly comparing the true bearing and observed bearing of a celestial object, which is normally the sun, and takes just a few minutes. It can be performed when the sun is just rising above the horizon in the morning and when it is setting in the evening.

You simply need to observe the bearing of the sun when it is just above the horizon, at around ½ to 2/3 of the suns diameter above the horizon, like in the photo shown below.

Compass Error – Amplitude of the Sun

1)       You take the bearing, the exact time and your position.

2)      Open the Nautical Almanac on the Daily Pages at today’s date and extract the declination for the hour in GMT, then use the ‘d’ number to find and apply the correction for the minutes and seconds of time from the correction pages.

3)      Crunch all the numbers in the following calculation. Sin Amplitude = Sin Declination / Cos Latitude

4)      Add or subject the amplitude from 90 or 270 to determine the True Bearing and then compare the two bearings.

Nautical Almanac – Declination from daily pages

Turning the Amplitude into a True bearing

The only unusual thing about the amplitude, is that it is the only angle in celestial navigation that is referenced  from East/West, so if the body is rising it is named East, and if it is falling it is named West. The body also is labelled North or South as per its declination. So if it was North Easterly you would add it the amplitude t0 90 to obtain the true bearing, if it was North Westerly you would subtract the amplitude from 270.
So lets make it simple, once you’ve got the figure you need to either add or subtract it from 90 or 270 to make it a true bearing.

Pro-forma

Download a pro-forma to make it easy http://www.zenithocean.com/files/amplitude.pdf

Theory

So, if your still reading, your question is now how does it work? Well first you need to understand what a Prime Vertical Circle is, this is a great circle running perpendicular to the horizon from the east and directly overhead your zenith and down perpendicular to the horizon in the west. So when we are measuring an amplitude we are measuring the arc of the horizon between the observed body and where your prime vertical circle intersects the horizon, shown as theta on the example below.

So your next question is why do we have to take the observation 1/2 and 2/3 of the suns diameter above the horizon. Well this is to allow for the difference between the observed horizon and celestial horizon, and whilst you could try to calculate that difference this is an easy fix and works.

Amplitude – Celestial