Calculation of sea time

[ETwhat?]

I think the cause of so many questions is due to the TRB not having it clearly written down.

[Steve]

We seem to be getting a lot of sea time questions of late. The official line is in MGN 92 (for deckies, but same applies to Engineers):

3.4 Calculation of Service

3.4.1 Sea service entered in official documents as in paragraph 3.3.1 above, will be reckoned by the calendar month, that is the time included between any given day in any month and the preceding day of the following month, both inclusive. The number of complete months from the commencement of the period, ascertained in this way, should be computed, after which the number of odd days should be counted. The day on which the crew agreement commenced, as well as that on which it terminated, should both be included, all leave of absence excluded and all odd days added together and reckoned at thirty days to the month.

[alistairuk]

FAs Chiefy has said, full months are full months... So if you were onboard 2nd of January to 2nd of March this is 2 months (regardless of feb only having 28days).

The 30 days applies to odd days you have left, since most people will not do exactly a month, so if your onboard from 1st of Feb to 10th of March, you would count; 1st feb-1st march as 1 month, then 2nd march - 10th of march as 8 days.

When you then add up the days from all your trips, if it's more than 30, you count this as a month. So if you had 62 days it would be 2 months 2 days.

It's a pain in the neck if you do just under a month!!

[Chiefy]

I normally work it out whole months are whole months regardless of number of days.....then all oddments are added together and divided by 30.

So in you example it might be or it might be 1 month 11 days, never been pulled for it by the MCA

Can someone clear this confusion for me please.

When it comes to calculating sea time I thought that no matter how many days are in a month, a month was always 30 days. Any days over 30 were tallied up and if over 30 this would be 1 month. For example, 42 days would be 1 month and 12 days. Is this correct?

I hope my post makes sense!

Any replies would be much appreciated.