gCaptain.com

(Ed. note: This entry is reposted in it’s entirety with permission from Red Right Returning. Doug Gould is a fellow tower from the East Coast.)

Are you aware of the concept of license creep? When you renew your USCG license, the new license will expire exactly 5 years from the date of issue of the renewed license. So, if you renew 5 months before your current license expires, you will loose 4 or 5 months of the fee you paid when you got the previous license. If you are on your 4th or 5th renewal, you may have lost over a year’s worth of user fees.

Say you got your first license on January 1, 1980. You would have been required to renew in ‘85, ‘90, ‘95, 2000 and 2005 to be current today. So, you should be on the 6th issue of your license. But, if you always tried to be a good scout and renewed 6 months early each time, you would actually already be on your 7th issue rather than your 6th.

Here is the deal: you pay about $100 in fees to get a 5 year license, but you can only use all 60 months of that if you wait to the very last day to renew. Over the course of your career, you end up getting cheated, because you’re paying fees based on a 60 month renewal cycle, but you are forced to “surrender” some of those months when you renew.

Well, the Coast Guard calls this license creep. They recognize that it happens, and they have put in place system to keep it at a minumum. Here is a link to the official Policy Letter that explains to the REC how to deal with the problem.When I renewed in December, I asked about this issue, but I didn’t have this Policy Letter in hand, and the license examiner didn’t seem to know anything about this policy and just kinda shrugged his shoulders and said “too bad”…If your renewal is coming up, print this out and request “delayed issuance” of your next license.

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This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd of the net.

As a member of the first “class” of mariners to fall under the new USCG training requirements for Chief Mate / Master I have enough Coast Guard licensing related stories of frustration to launch a separate blog. During these years of battling various REC’s one name surfaced repeatedly as source for sound advice; Andy Hammond. During his tenure as Coast Guard Regional Exam Center Chief he led the Boston REC to a position of the most respected in the country and made every mariner living outside his district envious of their New England counterparts.

I am therefore very excited to announce his latest en-devour; Maritime Licensing LLC, a national license consulting firm that aims to help mariners with the USCG’s credentialing process. In addition to his service, West Coast based mariners looking for guidance have the option of asking the equally respected licensing expert Norleen Schumer of MaritimeLicensing.com to help.

I wish no mariner the extent of problems I had advancing my license but with the emergence of these two companies I am confident you can breeze through any difficulty. -John

Links:

• Podcast with Andy Hammond

In an unusual turn of events the TSA (United States’ Transportation Security Agency) has launched a blog! While the review on NPR’s show “On The Media” was positive, with the agency reportedly solving problems identified by readers, you have to wonder about the name, “Evolution Of Security“, and the bloggers themselves. You can find the blogger profiles HERE but the following is an example;

Ethel
Hi! My name is Ethel and I’m from Wisconsin. I like music, I love ice cream, and I adore weird facts: Did you know that elephants can smell water from as far away as three miles? I joined the TSA about a year ago - prior to that I attended MIT where I earned degrees in Biology, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, and had the amazing opportunity to work on projects like designing artificial gravity systems for NASA.

Noticeably missing is a total lack of coverage about issues related to TWIC - the Transortation Worker’s Identification card. We have also failed to find any discussion related to Maritime Affairs.

We only have two questions… When will the NMC or MARAD launch a blog? Will they be responsive to reader comments?

Related Links:

• Evolution Of Security Blog
• Maritime Licensing Blog
• NYTimes Review