You need to do the MCA courses to rise as an engineer in the superyacht industry following the new ‘Engineering Officer (Yachts)’ route. However, for troubleshooting actual electrical control systems on board superyachts when you are far from land, our course will equip you with deeper knowledge and a rigorous troubleshooting approach to a wide range of electrical controls on board.

The 12 modules are spread over 4 days – see schedule above. We usually run courses in the Mediterranean from Autumn through to Spring in both Antibes, France and Palma de Mallorca, Spain.

The on-line version is still in preparation through the summer, but we expect to first start to deliver it in the Autumn 2020. Sign up now without obligation and we’ll send you details of when you can enrol as soon as possible.

There is a slight cost saving with the on-line version, and we can offer you spread payments, but you will have the advantage of being able to study each module at your own pace, as your busy life allows you to. You can also join our growing on-line community to ask questions and access our troubleshooting problem solver, with access to bonus modules.

No, but in 2021 we expect news on this. We have been working closely with Bluewater Training for the last two years as they have many courses accredited by the Marine and Coastguard Agency (MCA), plus many other courses which are optional. However, even prior to Covid-19, the MCA had a significant backlog dealing with just their STCW training program updates, so a new course such as ours was always going to take some time to get approved and accredited. It is unlikely that the pandemic has improved this situation, but meanwhile, we know there is a real need for this course.

Because of the questions superyacht engineers have been asking us as we meet them on board over the years, who have nevertheless already done MCA training under the old Y4-Y1 route, we realised there were gaps in the practical application of the some of the knowledge contained within the MCA training. The course was designed and written over a period of about 4 years then tested in a classroom situation to ensure the level and content was right. The content was then adjusted down (more basic on day 1) as well as expanding some later sections of material, and making the PLC section contain a guided demonstration.

The course is still being continuously updated as questions occur in classroom situations where extra explanations and content need to be added. Sometime material is removed to keep the course as fresh as possible. We anticipate the e-learning version of the course with an on-line forum for students will yield more questions which can either be covered by the growing knowledge base you can access as a student, or be adapted an incorporated into the course materials.

At the end of our ECS classroom course, when it is hosted by Bluewater, you will receive one of their holographic training certificates and your ECS modules will be added to the Bluewater training database they use to track your progress in the industry. The on-line version of the ECS course provides the almost identical content to the classroom course. We keep a growing database for you of your training modules access which we can send you as an e-certificate at the end of the course.

Great question. From previous students attending our classroom courses we have learnt that their previous MCA accredited engineering training, although it equipped them with a lot of excellent factual information, which is all well and good from the comfort of a control room, it was not so good when it came to be able to troubleshoot live electrical control system problems, whilst at sea. The purpose of the course is to instil in students a healthy curiosity about electrical circuit issues, understand and apply some very strong basic principles rigorously and to get to the heart of these problems quickly, in a topic area which is often less strong for them.