Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society

The GLSPS has put together and scheduled a USCG Auxiliary Boating Skills and Seamanship course for those that would like to hone their skills on the operation of boats.  This course will allow you to meet the first requirements of operating the R/V Preservation in the future but anyone can take this course to help hone their boating skills.  After the course is completed, your will be required to complete the course with the required 2 hours behind the wheel training.  Then you will need to have logged 40 hours of running the boat with a current Operator / Captain before you can take the boat out yourself.  Please buy a Captains Logbook (can be found at West Marine or online) to keep track of your hours which have to be signed off by the acting Operator / Captain each project you help with.

 

 

The Seamanship Course is more customized than the Coast Guard Auxiliary's version of the course.  It will have other GLSPS protocol added to the curriculum in addition to all of the typical elements of the Coast Guard Seamanship course. "Boating Skills and Seamanship" 14th Edition is required reading for this course and must be purchase separately from the course fee.  You can find it on Amazon.com for under $20 and a Kindle version is also available.  Please purchase and review this prior the course.

 

 

The Dates for the course will be April 16 -17, 2016.  The Course will be held at the Lund's Community Room in Golden Valley on Duluth Street.  (Address above).  This will be a weekend consisting of 8 hours a day for classroom and a written test at the end.  When the summer arrives and we have the RV Preservation launched for the season, the course will continue withe customization of the training.  The new Captain candidates will be required to perform additional two hours of training or behind the wheel.  

 

The cost associated with this course is $250.00 because of its customization to all the Captains in training. The price of the course can be divided in two with $125.00 for each installment.  Like most training courses, there is an expense involved and it has to be covered.  The instructor trainer will be Jay Hanson, which many of you know.  He is a USCG Master Captain with a 200 Ton or more license with a great deal of experience running all sorts of boats including his most recent experiences such as owner of the new North shore Scenic Cruises vessel the Wenonah and the University of Minnesota's Research Vessel the Blue Heron.  What better person would we want to instruct us to be the best we can be as an Operator /Captain and true seaman!

 

 

Those of you that have an interest in operating and being Captain of the R/V Preservation are required to take this course.