Longterm readers will know that I’m not exactly a fan of the marine electronics industry, and particularly the recreational branch…Oh, OK…I’m a dyed-in-the-wool, foaming-at-the mouth, raving critic.
Though I have called BS loud and often, I really thought I had seen it all but I just read something that has raised my indignation to new heights.
The National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) and the American Boat and Yacht Council (ABYC) have got together to put on a course that will result in successful participants receiving not one, not two, but three certifications:
- ABYC Electrical,
- NMEA Marine Electronics Installer,
- NMEA 2000® Network Installer,
in four days.
Is the whole industry so screwed up that I’m the only one who sees the problem in this? Four days…four days!
As far as I can see, there are no prerequisites…zero…nada. And I took the trouble to go through the registration process, up to paying the money, to check.
But don’t worry about a thing, they’re going to teach the attendees everything they need to know to work on your boat:
Topics include: Ohms law, grounds, battery and battery chargers, DC wiring, EMI, coaxial cables, antennas, AIS, marine VHF radios, transducers, radar, heading sensors and NMEA data interfacing.
Ok, if you’re not an electronics technician as I am, you can be forgiven for not understanding how damming that above quote is. You see, Ohms law is the most basic part of the beginning of the process of understanding electricity. I learnt about Ohms law and how to apply it at school…when I was fourteen.
To quote again from the course description:
…never before could a marine professional attend four days of training and potentially walk away with three certifications….
…the need for highly qualified installation specialists is more important than ever. This new program will go a long way toward ensuring that the technicians working on your boat will have proven expertise with both the electrical power side and electronic side of these complex systems.
I mean, really, in four days they are going from grade nine physics to understanding the intricacies of NMEA 2000 network architecture, boat wiring, and the super-complex software that ties all this lovely whiz-bang crap…err…equipment together?
How would you like it if you found that the mechanic working on your car had four days of training to get a certificate of competency? Not happy, I wager.
I guess this level of training might work if marine electronic and electrical equipment was super-reliable, standardized, and had really great manuals…stop dreaming, John.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge believer in the need to upgrade the training of marine maintenance professionals. And I do understand that many of the attendees will be deeply experienced and just there to get the certificate.
But if they need to explain Ohms law I fear there will be others, perhaps the majority, who will come out of the course as undertrained menaces who will be foisted on the unsuspecting boat owner at vast expense by boatyards because they are “certified”. And this will also tarnish the reputations of the real marine electronics and electrical technicians who have taken years to learn their trade.
Do Better
Come on ABYC and NMEA, you can do better. I suggest:
- Acknowledge the problem that many, perhaps most, “marine professionals” are woefully undertrained, particularly in electrical and electronic installation and troubleshooting. Heck, in my experience it’s rare to find a technician in a boatyard who even understands the basics of how to keep a battery healthy. (Freelancers tend to be better, I find.)
- Work with community colleges to set up real courses lasting months, not days.
- Set up a mentor/work placement system in which candidates work for several months with an experienced technician before being certified.
- Think along the lines of a European old-style apprenticeship program, although the traditional five years to reach journeyman is probably not practical.
Do all this and you guys would be doing something meaningful to make things better and make your certifications something that those who earn them can be truly proud of.
Dear John,
don’t worry too much. With the current state of marine electronics and networking, it really doesn’t matter much if the technician learned only about how to hold a multi-meter and how to check if the plugs and the sockets have the same number of pins. Either something will work by following the installation guide to plug the green plug into the green socket or anything less than a few years of experience debugging electronics won’t help much. I’m certain you saw the same development in the PC business and we all know how much worth was an MCSE (aka Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert). The same happens in the marine industry now only 20 years later.
And to be fair, the ABYC and NMEA are in a bind too. Whatever reasonable curriculum they propose will be certainly invalidated in a few seasons by the vendors pushing their latest and greatest extensions and alternatives. This seasons special: Everything Wireless but not talking to each other.
And a short note about apprenticeships: Here in Switzerland, the country where apprenticeships have probably the best reputation for professional training, it was very underwhelming with IT.
The domain got so fragmented that it became really hard to create a common curriculum of use to most apprentices. If some finished it successfully, it still was a crap-shot whether his knowledge is of any use to you as an employer.
HI Jo,
I will have to disagree. Plugging in green plug is a tiny part of what a good tech should be able to do. Here is just one example of a very common situation that requires clear understanding of trouble shooting:
https://www.morganscloud.com/2013/05/26/nmea-2000missing-the-obvious/
Or what about designing and installing a battery charging system that combines alternator, charger and renewables? In my experience most marine techs don’t even understand the basics of how the charging sources interact because they don’t have any understanding of Ohms law. And many can’t even define what a Watt is. A terrible situation that will not be fixed in four days, but could be remedied in four months.
Oh I agree with you that most marine electricians can be used only to wipe the bits falling off the bus from the floor and shouldn’t be allowed to touch anything involving electricity.
Unfortunately, just like car electronics and computers, things got so complicated recently, that there little chance of finding one who knows at least where his limits are. And then you have those poor guys bombarded from the industry with the latest and greatest and all information the get is just enhanced marketing stuff.
The only solution in sight is what happened in IT and car electronics: Basically the stuff became a black box with no serviceable parts inside and whatever needs to be adapted is doing it automatically.
Unfortunately I don’t see that happen in the Marine Business, where the concept of standardisation seems to be an anathema. Everything needs to be bespoke, designed by blind chicken choosing components or by marketeers. (I prefer the first of the two)
So what is there left for us consumers? Nothing much. Either try to get systems one understands or get systems for users which depend on them like regatta racers or professional fisher and pay for them accordingly.
Hi John,
I feel your pain. When I took over my boat, the previous owner dutifully handed over all the manuals for all the bits of electronics etc and included with the documentation was warranty card for the new autopilot and instruments signed my Mr X. Now Mr X is supposedly a marine electronics guru. Many local electronics vendors use him to install systems they sell. To my dismay I found that the system did not work well at all and the root cause was a brain damaged approach to the various bits were connected. The system (raymarine) has a pretty robust system of connectors and is actually quite simple to wire up. Instead the system was connected using cheap “china connectors” (this sort: http://goo.gl/GZ5mO6 ). needless to say there were lots of bad connections and all sorts of erratic behaviors.
The thing that really pissed me off was that after spending some time with the manuals to figure out how it was supposed to be done and about €70 in parts and connectors etc all it took was about 4 hours of work to re-wire the whole system from scratch and get it working flawlessly. Most of the 4 hours was spent figuring out how to get to the instruments and which wires were going where (no Mr X did not label anything). Needless to say he will never get a call from me for any work to be done.
Another case was a friend’s boat he has a set of old but perfectly functioning Raymarine/Autohelm ST50s and a newer C80 plotter. Unbelievably he was told that the newer C80 won’t talk to the ST50s when in fact they both talk “Seatalk 1” the only obstacle was the seatalk connector on the ST50s and the later ST60 and C80 generation of devices are different but the signaling is the same. Raymarine provide the appropriate conversion cable. We dug up the part number, bought a conversion cable off ebay and for the first time since he had his boat his instruments and plotter exchanged data. At least on this install whoever did the the original install of the instruments was diligent enough to provide a schematic of how everything was wired up and all the cables were correctly labelled.
I have a few other similar stories but you have probably heard more than enough of these.
Regards
Patrick
One of my favorite tools for electric installations: http://www.amazon.com/Brother-P-touch-Hand-Held-Label-PT-H100/dp/B008HPTR9U/
Hi Jo,
I have one just like that. Gave it to Phyllis for a present. Kind of like a guy who gives his kid an electric train.
Holy cow John. I’m with you. That’s a gut-buster of a 4 day course. When my boat started having electrical issues I took a US Power Squadron course to get up to speed. Over an 8 week period we spent the equivalent of 4 classroom days. I needed all that time for the concepts to sink in.
4 straight days with all that material plus the electronic/installation thrown in, no way. Just degrades meaning of ABYC certification.
Power Squadron does a great job, by the way.
Certificates make great kindling at our full moon parties…
John
This approach to training unfortunately follows a long tradition in some aspects of medicine.
I’m a radiologist and it frustrates me no end when I hear about weekend training courses that offer physicians (usually surgeons) weekend courses to learn procedures that take radiologists 4 years to learn. At the end of the weekend they get fancy certificates that attest to their “skill”, which they show to their hospitals and off they go.
Rant on!
Hi Reuben,
Yikes, that makes my concerns look petty!