In preparation for heading out to sea, there was some training requirements that really opened my eyes to what I was getting into. The US Coast Card issues Merchant Marine certifications known as a Z-Card or Merchant Mariner Identification Card. This is a certification and identification that allows you to work at sea and use identification when visiting foreign/domestic ports. Holland America has foreign flagged ships (Holland), and therefore the Z-Card isn't required, but the Seaman's Book or Monsterbook is. Requirements are similiar, which brought me to the STCW (Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping) class, sorta like POST here in California to try and relate it to something. The school was based out of Fremont Maritime in Seattle, WA. The photo to the left is the company logo, with the title "India Tango", which out at sea means, "I'm on fire". For more info on the class and school itself you can check out http://www.sea-safety.com/
The STCW Training was a great class. Outside of learning about maritime first aid (which is actually a little different than mainland - no 9-1-1 at sea), ocean survival and a bunch of other simulated training; we had 16 hours of firefighting. Ok, here I must conceide (especially to my Grandpa Wheeler - retired SDFD)..... firefighters have it much tougher than cops. Yeah I know when I was out there in patrol I jumped on the firefighter coffee drinking, work-out pimpin, 5 mile jogging, glory gettin, GQ lookin firefighters! But trust me, You grab a 2" water line and enter a structure with a dual level engine fire burning at 1500 degrees, with smoke so thick you can't see your glove in front of your face, regulate your breathing through a 25 minute tank, control the pressure of the fire hose while keeping the fire under control (aka- not causing the fire to spread or excess steam cook your dome like a goose) in that uncomfortable and hot fire gear. I was only there for 2 days and fought 2 controlled fires - MY PROPS TO THE FIRE DEPARTMENT! And apologies for prior kidding around saying us cops had a tougher job - FD deserves the Lazy Boy recliners in front of the big screen with the sexiest woman around flocking to them... well I guess that's going a little too far, but oh well.
During the class, we were fortunate to have a guy named Thomas Bliss from the US Coast Guard (professional photographer) in the class with us. Our class was well documented with high quality photos thanks to Tom (as seen below). Enjoy the pictures and if you for some reason are in need of STCW Training or certifications, I highly recommend Fremont Maritime.
The following are pictures from the water and personal survival portion of the class (Photos By Thomas Bliss © 2008 all rights reserved):
These photos are of the firefighter training (Photos By Thomas Bliss © 2008 all rights reserved):
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