Vessel type qualified for cadet’s seatime training
Training cadets to get seatime for full qualification has to be done on board vessels that are engaged in deepsea trading.
Master Mariner and CEO of Genesis Worldwide Shipping Company, Captain Emmanuel Iheanacho, made the clarification on the backdrop of discussions about the nation having a national fleet that can also serve for training cadets.
He said: “In relation to the statement on the importance of foreign going deepsea training and associated seatime for the validation of a cadet’s training, seatime cannot be acquired or logged on the small vessels, which are usually deployed by maritime training institutions for navigational training.”
The mariner/shipowner also stated that seatime served on coastal cabotage vessels could not be credited to the full extent of the actual time spent onboard.
“Coastal seatime is usually credited at a fraction of the actual time onboard and for that reason, seatime requirements by cadets are usually served on fully founded vessels, engaged in deepsea trading,” he said.
Iheanacho added that a national fleet, when it is eventually established, would need to be diverse in its market role description and would necessarily require to closely conform to the character of Nigerian international trading output.
He said: “this would encompass the requirement for the development of a container fleet for liner shipping, mostly containerised shipping operations and a wet cargo fleet for the evacuation of crude exports and a clean products tanker fleet for the carriage and distribution of imported refined clean products imports.
“The size of the fleet or components envisaged would need to be correlated to the size of our import and export trade output, particularly the volume of the trade which can be acquired by domestic shipping operators through competitive capacity.”
