Pre-reading (Publications and books)

[OC Welsh]

Hi,

I am hoping to study BSc Maritime Science and Navigation at Plymouth, and am an aspiring deck officer. Are there any textbooks books or reference publications that you recommend that I buy and start reading just to get familiar with.

Thanks

[riker]

To be honest, I'd focus on getting in first, nailing that interview etc. You'll get issued everything you need at college. The materials are quite good and cover all you need to know (obviously).

Butttt in the meantime I'd recommend getting familiar with the COLREGS. It will be your bread and butter as a Deck Officer. You'll need to have a very good understanding of them, so the earlier you start, the better.

I don't have any particular publications or materials that I personally use, I just refer to college notes that they issue, but perhaps try to learn a bit about stability, buoyage and generally everything maritime related on YouTube. It does all help actually in the end.

This guy is good for RoR and some navigation. Bear in mind any navigational stuff you will find isn't all that useful until you have a paper chart, compass and slide rule in your hand. It tends to only make sense until then.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaH...2bF4RGA/videos

This guy for stability

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af0O...andSeasEdAssoc



All the best!

[SeaboundBySunrise]

Honestly, not really. Spend some time with BBC bitesize and get your maths up to scratch if you're not too strong at that (I hadn't used maths in any real capacity for a decade before retraining so I found that very useful) but otherwise I'm just going to echo what Riker said. Learn the basics of Colregs, start to learn your bouyage, maybe a little bit of general meteorology (don't go too deep, just stuff like the science behind why clouds form, what a tropical revolving storm is, the science behind fog and dew point etc). The college will provide you with study notes for what you need to know academically, and then you'll get a feel for what practical knowledge is required for the job when you start the sea time element of your cadetship.

[georgeGheal]

Hi,

I am hoping to study BSc Maritime Science and Navigation at Plymouth, and am an aspiring deck officer. Are there any textbooks books or reference publications that you recommend that I buy and start reading just to get familiar with.

Thanks

I am currently final year student at Plymouth, so if you do have any question please do ask them.
The resource here are very good and they will teach as you know nothing, so the prior study isn't completely needed. However, if you still want to do some, the resource and advise given by riker is what I would recommend my self.

[zrrhqgjv]

If you maths are a bit rusty it might be worth brushing up, otherwise I'd say learning colregs and buoyage would be a good start.

COLREGS are available free here https://assets.publishing.service.go...65/msn1781.pdf you can print them out highlight things and get familiar with them. You will have to learn them at some point so getting ahead start will always be beneficial.

Same goes for buoyage here https://www.iala-aism.org/product/r1...uoyage-system/

I think is important and useful is to learn about the industry as a whole. Reading sites like https://gcaptain.com/ and https://www.marineinsight.com/ will give you a general awareness of the marine industry and what's currently going on.

If you wanted to invest in books there are 2 I would highly recommend.

Seamanship notes is a brief overview of most things you need to know at OOW level. Mostly bullet point style and very easy to understand.
https://www.witherbyseamanship.com/s...d-edition.html

21st century seamanship is quite expensive but is an excellent book and will last you for your whole career. It is very detailed and will be useful in future when you need to look something specific up or are studying for mates/masters exams. The book is illustrated covers almost every aspect of the industry, at your current level you can open at a random page and read it and learn something about the industry, you might not fully understand it but when it come to the lecture you will have at least of heard of it and know something about it giving you a head start. Its all about slowly gaining a rounded knowledge of the industry.

https://www.witherbyseamanship.com/2...eamanship.html

[SeaboundBySunrise]

If you wanted to invest in books there are 2 I would highly recommend.

Seamanship notes is a brief overview of most things you need to know at OOW level. Mostly bullet point style and very easy to understand.
https://www.witherbyseamanship.com/s...d-edition.html

This is a shout, I didn't find it all that helpful myself (just didn't click with my learning style) but I remember a few of my classmates finding it really helpful whilst prepping for orals. I feel like it's best described as a study guide, showing you the logical progression of information for answering pretty much any question in MGN69, but most of the actual hard information is in other publications.