GMDSS Recap: Week 1

Well, the past five days have been spent with my nose in the book, eyes in the notes, 5+ hours each night after class trying to grasp all the frequencies, acronyms, nomenclature and concepts of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System, or "GMDSS". It's not a terribly hard system grasp the basics on, yet there are numerous subsystems, requirements and processes involved that further complicate the learning. Essentially it's a worldwide network consisting of various systems that help the maritime industry with distress alerting and communications. Only larger ships (over 300 gross tons) are required to be compliant with GMDSS, and each of those ships is required to have 2 certified GMDSS operators onboard at all times underway, hence the class.

We had to learn all the various satellites that ships use for different purposes, and where these satellites orbit, what frequencies they monitor, their longitude and how to effectively use each one. There are satellites that circle the globe north to south listening for signals from EPIRBS and SARTS and others that stay in geo-stationary orbit to provide constant data access to ships for emergency alerting, weather and ship-to-ship or ship-to-shore communications.

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A typical GMDSS console

The other half of this week involved all the radio communications for ships and emergency alerting. If you want to contact another ship, land station, phone number, email, fax, etc, you need to understand how each frequency works and which one to use depending on where you are, what the conditions are (daytime, nightime), or what the other station might be monitoring. You also need to understand the process for sending distress messages in each system, and where/when to send it depending on where you are and what the distress is.

In between all of that information, you have various systems that overlap and use both systems (radio and satellite) for various purposes like weather broadcasts, SAR broadcasts, navigational warnings, etc.

To pass the first week of the class, we needed to get a 75% or better on the first exam consisting of 100 questions, to be completed in 90 minutes. Once passed, we will be issued an FCC license and our GMDSS certification. The second week involves 5 days of lab, punching buttons and actually getting to use the equipment in a real-time environment.

Quite a few folks didn't pass the first exam, but are retaking it on Monday and should have no problem. This class is no joke, and if you are reading this as you enter the Workboat Program, or are preparing to take GMDSS at PMI, I will say this... Read the pre-study material and learn AS much as possible about the topics before class starts, otherwise you will not survive. Hardest class I've had to-date and I'll be one of many ( many) that has to unfortunately retake the exam on Monday.

So, my weekend will take me back to books and notes in hope of an easy Monday. For now, it's a cold beer, tasty food and a good night's sleep.

 

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