NIMASA STCW PST common mistakes
NIMASA STCW PST · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When asked what to do first after hearing the general emergency alarm, the candidate starts moving toward the muster station or begins donning a lifejacket before checking which signal is sounding and where the emergency is.
Candidates memorise 'alarm means muster' as a single reflex and never learn the distinction between the general emergency alarm (seven short blasts and one long blast) and other signals such as abandon ship or fire, so they answer with a sequence rather than a decision.
What to do instead
Practise a signal-recognition drill: for each of the seven-short-one-long general alarm, the verbal abandon-ship order, and the fire alarm, state the correct first action aloud. Anchor the rule that the general alarm means proceed to the muster station by the designated route and await instructions, and that abandonment is only ever ordered by the master.
The candidate cannot state their own muster station, survival craft station, or the alternate route, and answers 'wherever the crowd goes' or names a deck without a side or number.
Muster information is posted on a card in the cabin and on posters, and candidates skim it once rather than committing it to memory, so under exam pressure they produce a vague answer instead of the specific station.
What to do instead
Learn the muster list content as a personal fact set: station name and deck, port or starboard side, primary and alternate route, lifeboat or liferaft number, and any assigned duty. Rehearse it as a spoken script until it can be delivered without prompts, and check it against the posted muster list each time you board a vessel.
Asked to put on a lifejacket, the candidate puts it on loose, leaves straps trailing, fails to secure the crotch strap, and does not check that it will not ride up over the head.
Candidates rehearse donning in calm conditions in a warm room and treat it as a dressing task, so they never test the garment against the actual failure mode, which is the jacket being pushed upward by buoyancy and the face being forced into the water.
What to do instead
Use the standard sequence every time: head through the opening, buckles and straps fastened and pulled tight, crotch strap secured, buddy check front and back, and a final tug upward on the shoulders to confirm the jacket cannot ride up. Practise it blindfolded or in dim light, since abandonment often happens in darkness.
The candidate describes entering the water in a lifejacket by jumping feet first with legs apart and arms up, or by diving in to swim to a raft.
The instinctive picture of 'jump and swim' dominates, and candidates have not been taught the entry posture that protects the airway and prevents the lifejacket from being driven up or the legs from being forced apart.
What to do instead
Memorise the controlled entry: look at the water, hold the lifejacket down with one hand and cover the nose and mouth with the other, keep feet together, step off and cross the other arm over the jacket on surfacing. State clearly that you never dive from height in a lifejacket and that you swim only after the jacket has settled.
On cold water immersion questions, the candidate says the main danger is hypothermia and gives a survival time of hours, omitting the immediate risks of cold shock, gasping and drowning in the first minute.
Hypothermia is the best-known term and candidates stop there, not realising that most cold-water deaths occur within minutes from aspiration and cardiac strain, long before deep body temperature falls.
What to do instead
Structure the answer in four stages: cold shock response in the first minute (gasping, hyperventilation, panic), swimming failure in the first five to fifteen minutes, hypothermia over thirty minutes or more, and collapse after rescue. State the immediate action for each stage, including controlling breathing, floating rather than swimming, and staying still.
The candidate recommends vigorous movement, swimming to stay warm, or rubbing the limbs of a hypothermic casualty, and suggests giving alcohol or hot drinks to a severely cold survivor.
Folk remedies and the idea that exercise generates heat are widely repeated, and candidates do not know that limb movement pushes cold peripheral blood back to the core and that alcohol accelerates heat loss.
What to do instead
Learn the rule that a cold casualty is handled gently and horizontally: no rubbing, no exercise, no alcohol, no caffeine, and no hot drinks if consciousness is impaired. For severe hypothermia, keep the casualty still and insulated, treat them as a stretcher case, and evacuate for medical care because of the risk of cardiac arrest during rewarming.
Asked to board an inflatable liferaft from the water, the candidate tries to climb in over the top or to pull themselves up by the canopy, and does not mention the boarding station, the righting procedure, or the painter.
The raft is imagined as a stable platform like a boat, and candidates have never handled the actual geometry of a raft at the waterline with wet clothing and a lifejacket.
What to do instead
Learn the sequence: swim to the raft or boarding station, secure the painter if not already secured, use the boarding ramp or ladder, keep low and distribute weight, and enter one person at a time. Know the righting procedure for an inverted raft and the instruction to stay with the raft rather than swim for shore.
The candidate describes abandoning ship by jumping into the sea and swimming away to be picked up, or lets go of the raft and swims toward a rescue vessel.
The dramatic image of swimming away from a sinking ship is more familiar than the doctrine of staying with the survival craft, and candidates do not appreciate how quickly a person in the water becomes invisible to searchers.
What to do instead
State the principle explicitly: stay with the craft, keep it together with other craft, and use the raft's equipment such as the sea anchor, canopy closure, and locator light. Only leave the craft when a rescuer directs it, and never swim away from a raft that is still viable.
Asked what immediate first aid to give a survivor with suspected hypothermia or a near-drowning casualty, the candidate jumps to CPR or warming without first checking response, breathing, and the airway, or starts abdominal thrusts and chest compressions on a breathing casualty.
Candidates learn CPR as a single dramatic skill and skip the primary assessment, and they do not know that near-drowning casualties may respond to rescue breaths before compressions or that a cold, slow pulse can be hard to detect.
What to do instead
Use a fixed primary assessment: check response, open the airway, look listen and feel for breathing, and only then start rescue breathing or CPR. Check the pulse for longer than usual in a cold casualty, give five initial rescue breaths in near-drowning, and continue resuscitation while evacuating, since cold casualties can recover after prolonged arrest.
The candidate cannot locate or operate the emergency communication and location equipment, confusing the EPIRB with the SART, not knowing the DSC distress alert on VHF channel 70, and not stating that Mayday is spoken on channel 16.
Equipment is learned as a list of acronyms rather than as functions and procedures, so candidates match names to names instead of matching a situation to the correct device and channel.
What to do instead
Build a function table: EPIRB transmits a satellite distress alert with identity and position and is activated manually or by float-free release; SART shows on a rescuer's radar and is switched on by survivors in the craft; VHF DSC alert on channel 70 followed by Mayday voice on channel 16. State what each device does, where it is stowed, and how it is activated.
On PPE and drill questions, the candidate treats the immersion suit or lifejacket as optional during a drill, skips the safety briefing, or does not know the difference between a drill and an actual emergency when the alarm sounds.
Drills are treated as paperwork or as a nuisance, so candidates do not connect PPE requirements and drill procedures to the assessed knowledge, and they have never thought about what changes when a drill becomes real.
What to do instead
Learn that drills are conducted as if real: correct PPE and lifejacket worn, muster list followed, briefing and debriefing held, and records kept. Know the immersion suit donning sequence and its limitations, the need to check the suit and jacket before each drill, and the rule that on hearing the alarm you follow the muster list until told it is an exercise.