Short courses sit alongside your certificate of competency, with their own expiry dates. An expired certificate can stop you sailing on a perfectly valid COC.
STCW courses sit alongside your certificate of competency, not inside it. They have their own validity periods, and an expired certificate can stop you sailing even when your COC is perfectly valid. This is a documentation problem that causes real disruption, and it is entirely avoidable.
Check before you book. Course names, durations and refresher rules are set by DG Shipping and revised periodically, and courses must be taken at an approved institute. Confirm the current list and approved institutes at dgshipping.gov.in.
Four short courses that every seafarer holds, usually completed during pre-sea training:
Tankers require additional familiarisation and, for certain roles, advanced training in oil, chemical or liquefied gas cargo operations. Ships using low-flashpoint fuels attract training under the IGF Code, and vessels operating in polar waters have their own requirement. These are driven by the ship you join rather than by your rank.
Several certificates require refresher training on a five-year cycle. The date that matters is the certificate's own expiry, not the anniversary of your last contract, and letting one lapse mid-contract creates a problem that is difficult to solve from aboard.
The practical remedy is unglamorous: keep a single list of every certificate with its expiry date, review it before each contract, and renew anything falling due during the contract before you join rather than after.
The content reappears in your oral examination and in the STCW written material — fire triangle and extinguishing media, fixed installations and their release procedures, enclosed space entry, the muster list, and the abandon ship sequence. Treating the courses as a box-ticking exercise means learning the same material twice.
SOLAS and LSA, firefighting, MARPOL Annexes I to VI, medical first aid, PSSR, ISPS, watchkeeping and BRM, emergency procedures and ISM.
Start STCW practiceThe full map — which certificate comes when, and what each exam actually asks.
Read it →Cadet to chief engineer — every rung, and the sea time between them.
Read it →The round, the handover, and the alarms that matter — practical and examinable.
Read it →Function-wise syllabus, written papers, and what the assessment covers.
Read it →