We’re starting with the Standards for Training, Certification and Watchkeeping. Today has been all about personal safety and social responsibilities. This is a commercial qualification that’s required for anyone standing a watch at sea, from lowly sailors like myself to merchant marine crew on the big boats.

This week is going to be entirely shore based, which is good, because it meant we could swap boats with the crew who lost steering this morning so they could carry on adventuring.

This is an industry that likes its acronyms. My homework is to read SOLAS, or the international convention for the Safety Of Life At Sea. I’ll be saving MARPOL, MLC, MNTB, the ISM code, the ISPS code, LLC, and FSS code for another evening.

We’ve gone through working practices at sea, roles and responsibilities as part of a crew, and what to do in emergencies (have a plan and stick to it). I’m also much more scared of pirates than I was this morning.

Tomorrow, fire safety training starts, and on Thursday we’ll be in a fire container, which sounds like it’s going to be amazing and also scary.