I am also one of "the lucky 5" who attended Merchant Maritime Warfare Centres (MMWC's) first Surveillance & Training Officer (STO) course, in fact im one of the "Land Lovers" who attended the course.All the tanks goes to Nick for his offer and for all the work he and the team at MMWC put in to organise and run this course.
So here`s what`s going on:First of all if you wanna get there...
If you go by train....The fastest way to get to the MMWC classroom is by Bournemouth Airport Shuttle. The service bassicaly runs once every hour from 7am to 7pm seven days a week.
The last bus to the airport leaves Bournemouth Station at 6pm.Here is the Bournemouth Airport Shuttle`s Information Line: 01202 557007
Once you got at the airport and from there you`ve got two options:
1) You are a gym freak and prefer to walk..Be warned: Is a 2.5 mi walk – about 49 mins (20 mins if you walk fast)
2)Get a cab and in 5 to 10 mins depending on the trafic you `ll be in the MMWC classroom.
There`s a lovely coffe machine there in the lounge area very cheap unlike Surrey and Kent:
50 P for a really good coffe and the amazing thing is the machine is set to give back change..
Now ...About the course...Basically the course was structured like that:
Introduction to Surveilance and Training Officer
Maritime introductions
Risk analisis
Security Briefing
Defence
Group Exercise
Emergency Procedures
Simulator Scenarios
On Water sesion
Examination.
But that`s only a outline of the course .
I do not know about the others but i am a practical type of the guy..That`s how i learn stuff..You show me how to do it and i do it.So that`s why for me the practical aspects of the course were very interesting. I´ve had a browse of other anti piracy courses and they look a little, shall we say... bland?.....


I will have to keep my posts short to 2000 characters long so here we go...

Here`s the first pic with the lucky five...