Can You Use Your Military Experience as Sea Service for a Captain’s License?

If you served in the Navy, Coast Guard, or another branch of the military and are now looking to earn your captain’s license, you’re probably wondering, Can I use my military experience toward the sea time requirements?

The short answer is: maybe — but it’s complicated.

Understanding how to use military experience as sea service requires knowing what types of duties qualify, how to prove your time, and what pitfalls to avoid.

My Personal Experience: When Military Time Doesn’t Count

I’m a Navy guy, so naturally I looked into using my Navy experience as sea service time for my captain’s license. I served on the aircraft carrier USS Midway, and we were deployed most of the time — always at sea on one of the forward-most deployed vessels in the fleet.

You’d think all that sea time would count toward my captain’s license, right? Wrong.

Even though I spent countless days underway, I was an electronics technician fixing jets on the flight deck. I didn’t participate in the actual running of the vessel. Instead, I was what they called an “Airedale,” part of a squadron rather than a ship’s company.

The Coast Guard doesn’t count that time toward a Merchant Mariner Credential. Despite being at sea almost constantly, none of my military experience qualified because I wasn’t involved in navigational duties or vessel operations.

How to Use Military Experience as Sea Service: What Actually Qualifies

I learned an important lesson regarding military sea time: It’s not just about being on the water. It’s about what you’re doing while you’re there.

Which Military Jobs Count

To use your military experience as sea service, your duties must directly relate to the operation and navigation of the vessel. Jobs that typically qualify include:

• Boatswain’s Mate
• Quartermaster
• Operations Specialist
• Yeomen performing duties related to vessel operation
• Officers and enlisted personnel serving navigational watches
• Engine room personnel (in some cases)

Jobs that typically don’t qualify include:

• Aviation mechanics (like I was)
• Cooks and food service
• Medical personnel
• Administrative roles
• Most technical specialties unrelated to vessel operation

The 60% Rule

Even if your military duties qualify, the Coast Guard only credits 60% of your military sea service time toward your captain’s license. This means if you spent 100 days at sea in a qualifying role, you’d only receive credit for 60 days.

This percentage reduction applies across all military branches, whether you served in the Navy, Air Force, or even the Coast Guard itself.

So if you’re banking on military time to hit your 360 days of sea service for an OUPV/Six-Pack or Master’s license, keep this reduced credit in mind.

How to Prove Your Military Sea Time

If you’re confident in your military experience and decide you’d like to use it as part of your sea time, then you’ll need to submit the appropriate documentation to the Coast Guard. 

Your DD-214 doesn’t cut it as proof of qualifying sea service. Instead, you’ll need to request your official military transcripts detailing your specific duties, assignments, and time spent in qualifying positions. These transcripts provide the detailed job descriptions and duty assignments the Coast Guard needs to evaluate your experience.

If you have questions about whether your specific military experience qualifies, you’re welcome to contact Mariners Learning System to talk, or you can reach out to the National Maritime Center directly. But here’s a crucial tip: If you speak with the National Maritime Center by phone, always ask them to send you written confirmation of what they tell you.

Don’t rely on verbal assurances; get everything in writing with a date, name, and preferably a reference to the relevant Code of Federal Regulation. This documentation helps if you run into a problem with your sea time being rejected later.

Special Benefits for Military Personnel

The Coast Guard offers some genuine benefits for military personnel pursuing captain’s licenses.

Fee Waiver

For active military, certain reservists, and recently separated veterans (within 180 days), the Coast Guard now waives application fees for captain’s licenses. This applies regardless of whether you use your military experience as sea time, though you still have to provide relevant documentation to qualify for this benefit.

Extended Recency Requirement

If you’re using your military experience as sea time, the Coast Guard offers a significant perk to veterans that not everyone knows about. 

In general, the Coast Guard requires 90 days of sea time within the last three years to establish what they call “recency.” However, they extend the recency requirement to seven years for military experience (with additional tonnage and horsepower specifications). 

Veterans still sometimes run into trouble with recency if their duties or vessel tonnage don’t qualify or if their sea time is older than they realize.

The Reality: Why I Often Recommend Against It

Getting your military time to qualify as sea service may be possible, but it’s also complicated, time-consuming, and full of potential pitfalls.

The process involves:

• Obtaining detailed military transcripts
• Proving your specific duties qualify
• Navigating complex Coast Guard regulations
• Potential delays and application rejections

If you want to take on this challenge, more power to you! But I often recommend that veterans accumulate their sea time separately, especially if you have easy access to a boat.

This approach could save you a world of headache, create a more straightforward application for processing, and qualify you just as well as trying to use military experience.

The Bottom Line on How to Use Military Experience as Sea Service

Understanding how to use military experience as sea service requires careful evaluation of your specific military role, the complexity of the application process, and your other options for accumulating sea time.

If you have substantial qualifying military sea time and limited civilian boating experience, it might be worth pursuing. But if you can reasonably accumulate 360 days of civilian sea time, that’s often the simpler path.

Remember, the Coast Guard doesn’t give bonus points for military service when issuing credentials. Time on a military vessel isn’t considered more valuable than time on your personal boat.

If you do decide to pursue military sea service credit, talk with the Coast Guard, get everything in writing, and be prepared for potential hiccups in the application process. Military service can be a stepping stone to your captain’s license — you just need to approach it with eyes wide open.

If you have questions or need help getting started, we’re happy to speak with you.