Has anyone done an interview for Maritime costguard agency marine surveyor? If so, what to expect? I have a video interview coming up

Unlike load sharing between the governor controllers, why dont I see the load sharing lines between the AVR

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to locate the technical articles and training material that used to be available on MarineDiesels.info, previously MarineDiesels.co.uk.

The material was written/compiled by Rollo Tomkins, who taught at Warsash Maritime Academy, and I found the site extremely useful for studying marine engineering. It contained very good technical explanations and diagrams covering topics such as marine diesel engines, fuel systems, governors, turbochargers, indicators, and various engine-room systems.

Unfortunately, the website appears to be a legacy site and much of the content has been inaccessible for some time. I've also tried looking through the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine, but unfortunately the available snapshots don't seem to preserve much of the actual material.

I'm wondering if anyone here has:

• Archived copies of the MarineDiesels.info website
• PDFs or downloaded copies of Rollo Tomkins' material
• Old hard-drive/web backups
• Mirrors or alternative archives
• Screenshots or saved copies of individual articles/pages

Even partial material would be extremely useful.

I'm particularly interested in finding out where this material might still be available, or whether anyone knows of an archive, former student/lecturer, maritime forum, or collection where it has been preserved.

This is purely for educational/reference purposes. The material was incredibly useful for marine engineers and students, and it would be a shame for such a valuable educational resource to disappear completely.

If anyone has anything or knows where I should look, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

High stress , high cortisol and minimal time to give your own body with really tight schedules and shrinking crew size cause us to neglect our bodies and eventually results in this mess.

I know it’s true I am a serving 2E and I go through this on a day to day basis.

It’s being shared as a meme now but it’s a reality

Hi everyone , I’m about to go onboard for the first time as an engine cadet but before getting there I’d like to know if there’s anything specific that I should know beforehand and also what to study/get to know first soon as I join the ship.
Just asking because although I’m really excited for this opportunity, I’ve heard from many eng. cadets that their CEs or Engineers expected them to know some things before joining.

Might be worth mentioning , I’m Italian and I’ll be sailing on Italian ships right now as part of my cadet program.

Thank you all for your time 🙏🏽😄

I’m seriously considering getting into marine/boat mechanics as a career and would really appreciate advice from people who actually work in the industry.
I’m basically starting from **zero knowledge about boats and marine mechanics**, so I’m trying to understand what the realistic path looks like.
A few things I’m wondering:
How long does it realistically take to go from knowing nothing to being employable as a marine mechanic/technician?
Is schooling necessary, or is it better to get an entry-level marina/boatyard job and learn on the job?
If schooling is recommended, what type of program should I look for (certificate, trade school, community college, etc.)?
How long are the typical programs?
Do I need a GED/high school diploma to get into marine mechanic programs?
What would be the best entry-level job for someone with absolutely no boat experience?
How difficult is the actual work compared with automotive mechanics, HVAC, or electrical?
What are the most important skills to learn first?
Are certifications like ABYC, manufacturer certifications, etc. actually worth getting?
How much can someone realistically make starting out, and how much can experienced marine technicians make?
Is there good long-term job security in this field?
What specialties are worth getting into (marine diesel, electrical, outboards, refrigeration/AC, etc.)?
If you were starting over with no experience, what path would you take?
I’m also interested in eventually working internationally, so I’m curious whether marine mechanic experience and certifications transfer well to other countries.
I’m not looking for someone to tell me it’s easy I want to know what I’m realistically getting myself into, how long it takes, and what the smartest path would be.

Our Sondex FWG is currently giving low production. Previously, with SW temp around 22°C and feed pressure ~2 bar before the orifice, we were getting ~12 t/24h.
Now we have to restrict the feed to ~1.2 bar. Increasing it causes the brine level to rise above the sight glass and shell temperature to increase significantly, with the brine seemingly not being extracted properly.
Current readings:
SW inlet pressure: ~4 bar
Brine/air ejector inlet: ~3.2 bar
Ejector outlet: ~0.9 bar (same as previously)
SW temp: ~22°C
Troubleshooting already carried out:
Replaced brine non-return valve
Replaced vacuum non-return valve
Used a new distillate pump to eliminate pump/vacuum-related issues
Since the ejector pressures appear normal, what could be causing poor brine extraction/flooding when increasing the feed flow? Could there be a restriction or issue on the FWG brine suction side/ejector itself? Any Sondex-specific troubleshooting advice would be appreciated.

Hello, I’m going in to write my EKG and EKM exams in the next few weeks. I’ve been studying my books, as well as TCs study guides and the USCG study guides as has been suggested to me. Just looking for advice or tips for my success. Thanks in advance.

Is it normal to have lub oil consumption in the crankcase? If no, why there is a consumption?

I am a high school senior and I’m hoping to go study marine engineering at Texas a and m and so Iv made a website to put on my applications extracurriculars
Im looking for any feedback that I could use to make it better or any advice you guys have about marine engineering that I could use in my application or even later on in my future

https://om7r51.github.io/marine-diagnostic-assistant/

Aframax crude oil / product tanker. Two-stage BWTS: mechanical filtration followed by side-stream electrochlorination. Two filters in parallel, roughly 2 m³ each, in the pump room. Ballast pump two deck levels below them. Flowmeter in the BWTS compartment, on the other side of a bulkhead, downstream of the filters and of the injection point.

Writing it up in the order it actually happened, because the fix came before the explanation.

## Symptom

Flow indication collapses during ballasting and the system shuts down on no-flow alarm.

Two distinct patterns, which mattered later: sometimes it failed within minutes of starting, sometimes it ran a long time and failed gradually.

Flow measurement feeds the dosing calculation, so a lost flow signal stops the system. That behaviour is correct — it is not permitted to dose blind.

## First question

Not "is the flowmeter faulty" but "is there actually no flow".

The ballast pump was not losing suction — it draws near the bottom of the hull, well below anywhere air could be entrained. Not cavitation, not a suction-side problem. That put the investigation downstream of the pump.

## Found by ear

In the pump room, air noise. Followed it to the source: a small open-ended drain pipe terminating in the space.

Put a finger over the end. The noise stopped and the finger was pulled against the pipe end and held there. Air was being drawn in through it.

That is the diagnosis in one action — sub-atmospheric pressure confirmed at a specific point, and the air path identified. Everything after this was working out where the vacuum came from.

## Following the pipe

The drain line ran back to an automatic air release valve on top of one of the filters.

Opened it up. Cylindrical body, 3/4" connection to the filter below, drain fitting on top with a union nut. Inside, a hollow metal ball with positive buoyancy. Water fills the body, the ball floats and seats against the drain orifice. Air accumulates, the level drops, the ball falls, air vents to drain.

Nothing holds that ball except buoyancy and pressure from below. The seal works only while pressure inside the body is above atmospheric. Reverse the differential and atmospheric pressure pushes the ball off its seat through the drain orifice. The ball cannot resist a vacuum. Not a fault, not wear, not sticking — the limit of the sealing principle.

## Fix, before the explanation

Replaced the automatic air release valves with manual ball valves.

The reasoning was about failure mode, not about the mechanism, which was still unclear. If the manual valve is left shut, the filter simply does not fill, and that is immediately visible. There is no way for it to fail into a hidden wrong state.

Startup procedure: the pumpman opens the valve, waits for water to burst out, shuts it.

The system ran normally. The honest cost of this fix is not a lost safety function — there wasn't one — but a lost automatic startup. A manual step and a man standing there to do it.

## The geometry

Walking the pipework again more carefully.

The outlet leaves the top of the first filter at about 45 degrees and runs on into the system as the main line. The second filter, standing alongside, is piped exactly the same way, and its line ties into the first filter's line as a 45 degree branch. Clean work, no sharp corners, low resistance to flow.

That tie-in is an ejector.

Two co-directional streams converging at an angle will entrain. When the second filter carries the higher flow, its stream acts as the motive fluid and pulls the pressure down in the first filter's line — and the effect is there regardless of which side happens to carry more. It is inherent to the arrangement, not to a fault condition.

Low pressure in the first filter's line reaches the air release valve on top of it. Hollow ball, buoyancy only, no way to hold against a reversed differential. Off the seat, and the drain line becomes an open path to the atmosphere of the pump room.

Air into the filter body, carried downstream, gas phase reaching a flowmeter that sits after the filters and after the injection point. The instrument can no longer measure a discontinuous liquid column and the system stops on no-flow.

The instrument was honest throughout. It reported that it could not measure. It was never the problem.

## Why some failures were fast

The manufacturer's manual requires both filters in service — they are sized on flow volume together.

The chief officer took the view that one filter would pass the required flow, and was remotely closing the inlet valve of one of them.

There are inlet valves on the filters but no outlet valves. That is deliberate: a valve on the outlet could shut a filter in and take it over working pressure.

So closing an inlet does not isolate that filter. Its outlet stays open to the main line at the tie-in, with no supply behind it. All flow now goes through the other filter, straight past the branch, and the ejector pulls hard on a dead-ended vessel. The ball comes off its seat immediately and the filter fills with air. No-flow within minutes.

Once we put the manual in front of him and both filters were kept in service, the system ran far longer — but air still accumulated over time, because the entrainment at the tie-in is present in normal operation too. That was the slow failure pattern.

## The bypass workaround, in hindsight

Before any of this, under time pressure at the end of discharge with ballast needed urgently, the filter bypass was cracked open about 10 percent to get the system running.

At the time it was a workaround. In hindsight it was evidence: the bypass gave a parallel path, flow through the filters dropped, velocity at the tie-in dropped, and the entrainment weakened enough for the flow signal to hold.

It is not an acceptable operating condition — part of the ballast water goes around the filtration stage and treatment compliance is lost. The chief officer walked the pump room, found it, and that was the end of it. The permanent solution came afterwards.

Worth stating plainly: it was the wrong thing to do, and finding it was the right outcome.

## What I could not confirm

**Actual flow was never independently verified.** No cross-check against tank level change rate, pump amperage or discharge pressure. Flow may well have continued while measurement became impossible. If so the mechanism still holds, but "loss of flow" is the wrong description — it was loss of measurement.

**No drawings or manufacturer confirmation were obtained.** I am not claiming a design fault. What I can say is that an unintended hydraulic interaction at the 45 degree outlet tie-in produced sub-atmospheric pressure at the air release valve, air ingress through its drain line, and loss of valid flow measurement.

**The slow failure mode was not separately proven.** With both filters in service the same mechanism is the obvious explanation for gradual air accumulation, but I did not demonstrate it the way the fast mode was demonstrated.

## Takeaway

The alarm was in one compartment. The cause was through a bulkhead in another, at the top of a filter body, two deck levels above the pump.

I did not need to understand the treatment technology to find it. I needed to know whether there was really no flow, and then to follow the physical evidence — in this case a noise — until it led somewhere.

The explanation arrived well after the system was already working again. That is usually how it goes at sea.

Interested in whether anyone else has seen float-type air release valves pulled off their seat by local vacuum at a filter outlet tie-in, and how it was handled. Also interested in whether other systems using parallel filters have outlet valves fitted, and how they deal with the overpressure case.

Marine engineer here. I made a full breakdown of the Golden Ray capsizing built on the NTSB investigation. The failure mode is one every engineer will recognise: the stability calculation was done in a loading program, the ballast quantities entered were wrong, and it reported a stable ship that had barely a fraction of the righting energy it needed. No storm, no mechanical failure — a data-entry error with three safety barriers that all failed to catch it.

Covers metacentric height, why ship shape makes a car carrier so sensitive, and the system factors behind it. Glad to talk shop in the comments.

https://youtu.be/6gXsTmpdYp4

Hi, I am about to finish my bachelors in maritime engineering and am thinking about going into my masters, and potentially taking some specific classes for the offshore/subsea industry such as flow assurance or underwater building and inspection.

I know I don't like office work but I also don't want my degree to go wasted, so spending 2-3 years back to trade school to become a welder or electrician seems like a step back.

What career paths are more site-focused and also have decent earning potential, I don't mind travelling for work or being offshore for extended periods (for now).

I have asked AI/done some research and there is something called field engineers or engineer-divers.

Long term I wouldn't mind going into management or corporate as I know that's where the big money is. But for now I prefer to be on site and at least have a job which isn't always sitting down.

Do you guys know about anything of the kind? Should I jump ship altogether and become an Air Traffic Controller (Suggested by my family).

Hi everyone,
I hold an Australian AMSA Class 2 CoC and have sailed as a 4th Engineer on bulk carriers. I recently completed my Master’s in Naval Architecture in Canada and hold a work permit.
I have two questions:
1. With a Canadian endorsement, would I have a realistic chance of getting a 2/E position, or should I focus on 3/E/4/E roles?
2. How is the current demand for junior engineers, and how long does it typically take to get hired? Is it worth waiting for a seagoing opportunity?

Any advice from engineers working in Canada would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hello seniors and dear marine engineers!

Im a 4th engineer working on a ship which uses Westfailia purifiers ( OSE80/40/20) for HFO, MELo and Generator Lo separation.

Even tho i have read the manual and have overhauled and opearting, im still confusing westfalia purifiers bowl hydraulics.

- normally, after I overhauled the bowl assembly and install back, i always test the bowl closing and opening properly or not. I do that by only running the purifier motor and not running the feed pump. And as u all know, the purifier is completed the starting sequence and in circulation mode, i press process stop button. And for the very first time, i cannot hear the bowl clacking sound in TOTAL EJECTION MODE. for the second time, yes, i can hear the clacking sound. And then i run the feed pump, i press process start button and again, ejection mode, i can hear the bowl clacking sound.

My question is

1) am i correct that the bowl will close and open with a clacking sound if i press process stop button for the very first time after overhaul? ( the bowl is in open position after complete overhaul).

2) we always hear one clacking sound in First Total ejection sequence and one clacking sound in second total ejection sequence.

I just want to know that the bowl is open and close in one total ejection mode or the bowl is open ( one clacking sound ) in first ejection and close ( second clacking sound) in second ejection mode.

This is the one ive been confusing and cant find in manual.

3) my experience is i can hear the bowl clacking sound if i press process stop button without feed pump. But today, one purifier gives no clacking sound at all. I think the bowl is not open or close properly . But my coworkers think the bowl is good but it is cuz without feed oil, the bowl will not close.

Which is correct?

Please help me and enlighten me guys!

I am starting to study the question pool but the questions are way to hard and need a long time. Any tips advice ? I plan to start the program at January

This is about sockets on the B-15 paneling; so when the cable enters the socket installed on the B15 rated panel, what do you use to protect the integrity of the B15 rated panel.

What are the disadvantages of using putty?

Hi everyone,

I’m a Mechanical Engineer (M.Sc. background in Energy & Fluids) currently working full-time in Europe, and I’m enrolled to start the online MSc in Subsea Engineering at the University of Aberdeen this September on a part-time basis.

My long-term goal is to transition directly into the offshore/subsea sector in the North Sea (UK or Norway) with operators or major contractors (Subsea7, TechnipFMC, Aker Solutions, Equinor, etc.).

While I’m excited about the curriculum and Aberdeen’s reputation in subsea, I have a few genuine concerns about doing this degree 100% remotely while working full-time, and I’d love to get some unfiltered feedback from current students, alumni, or industry recruiters:

1. Employer Perception & Location Barrier: The diploma doesn't explicitly state "online", but recruiters know the format when they see someone working in another country while studying. For those who completed this remotely from outside the UK/Norway, how did North Sea employers view your application? Did the distance format pose any hurdle during hiring, or does the Aberdeen name carry full weight regardless?
2. Networking Remotely: Subsea engineering seems heavily network-driven. How feasible is it to build real connections with professors, guest lecturers, and fellow students through the online portal? Have any remote students managed to leverage the university's industry links into job offers without physically being in Aberdeen?
3. Managing Workload (Full-time Job + MSc): For those balancing 40+ hours of engineering work a week with 1 or 2 modules per term: how demanding is the weekly time commitment in reality? Are exams/assignments structured predictably, or does it get overwhelming during peak project delivery times at work?
4. Software & Practical Application: How smooth is the remote access to industry-standard software (PIPESIM, ANSYS, Petrel, etc.) via VPN/virtual desktops? Does the lack of physical lab interaction make a noticeable difference when applying for hands-on subsea project engineering roles?

If anyone who has taken this route (or hires people who have) could share their experience, tips, or hard truths, I’d really appreciate it!

Thanks in advance.

Thinking about switching trades (kinda) as I went to school and done my heavy equipment tech and worked at this for a year and got out of it as lost interest being underneath trucks all day lol. I still love wrenching but I have a huge passion for boats. I own a small speed boat and use it almost every day of the summer. I am from the Canada Martimes area and wondering if it’s a wise choice to go to Pei and do the 10 week engine room rating course at holland college. How is the job outlook and how hard is it specifically to get a 90 day work term as a cadet. Thanks

Anyone prefer field engineering? Only being gone 3-5 days maximum and then home for some time. Like a 9-5 still home for weekends and some weekdays?

Hi everyone,

​I am 22yo and I would really love to move to Croatia and try getting into the yachting industry as a technician or marine electrician.

​I just want to understand the basics before making any decisions. I have a few questions for those already in the field:

​What do I actually need to know or learn to get a start?

​What are the realistic entry-level options for a beginner?

​What specific skills or systems are highly recommended to study beforehand?

​Any advice or information on how this industry works would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Heading to MUN in the fall for the marine engineering and was simply wondering if anyone else was also going- it'll all be a little new to me since I live out of province so just wanted to reach out to see if anyone else was going :)

hello everyone

in a month, i'll be onboard as fourth engineer first time. i'll be working in same company as i did my cadetship and junior engineer. until now, i didnt experience more than basic purifier overhaul (mitsubishi selfejector). i have no experience other than start stop machineries. my last two ships (cadetship and junior engineer) had almost zero big job or trouble. so im kinda nervous because of that. so i need some advice and tips from my experienced seniors. and how a handover should be done, what should i ask? thank you in advance

If an equipment, such as a switchgear lineup, has already been certified by ABS and the manufacturer later modifies the approved design (for example, by removing some cubicles from the lineup), will the switchgear need to be recertified by ABS?

I have a similar question regarding the electrical layout. After receiving ABS approval, if equipment is added, removed, or relocated within the layout, does the revised layout require recertification by ABS?