Letter No. 5 · Letters to Mariners
From: Captain Wayne Eric Henry
North 37 Maritime Academy · Lexington, Virginia
27 October 2026

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To the Mariners,

Fellow mariners,

North 37 is actively becoming U.S. Coast Guard–approved. We are in the process of obtaining Coast Guard approval through National Maritime Center (NMC) pathways for course approval and related recognition — and from there, possibly recognition from other nations as well. That is our thesis on credentials: approval as work in motion, not a finished claim we invent for named courses today. What we claim is the work itself — meetings, curriculum rigor, quality-assurance standards, and a persistent partnership with the reality of credentialing. Letter to Seafarers No. 1 named the Qualified Assessor bottleneck under 46 CFR. The Assessment-at-Sea letter said competence belongs on the vessel. This letter says what we are doing about both: actively becoming USCG-approved, and improving the train-the-trainer material so captains and officers can assess the way the work has always been judged aboard.

Name the bottleneck. Too often, access to shore school and assessments forced ashore become the gate. Good mariners pay time and money — and lose sea days and pay — to prove skills the vessel already shows every hitch. The knowledge is not the problem. The path to a clean, honest sign-off too often is. That is the bottleneck in the education process: not whether you can do the work, but whether the system will let you prove it without walking off the ship into another classroom bill.

Leaving the vessel to go ashore for school compounds the strain on personal and family life after mariners have already been away, on average, six months a year or more. Do not send a man or woman home into more absence for classrooms when the work — and the proof — can stay with the ship. Families already keep the lights on through the hitch. They should not also absorb weeks of shore school because assessment was never allowed to live where the competence was earned.

That is why our goals for quality-assessment change and education center on Starlink. Ship connectivity now lets us teach at sea remotely and do a great service to the aspiring mariner in the process. Assessors and students can share work, observe standards, and take part in mentorship and remote quality-assessment participation without forcing every step into a shore classroom. The sea can stay the classroom. The connection lets the academy stand watch with you. Officer-led assessment and remote teaching are not a slogan; they are how we refuse to trade family time for another trip ashore to demonstrate what the vessel already knows.

Updated and improved train-the-trainer is how we build the human side of that standard. North 37 is building and updating train-the-trainer material so captains and officers can assess competence at sea the way the work has always been judged aboard — clearer, more rigorous, usable underway. Better QA and assessor preparation materials mean cleaner sign-offs, stronger officer-led culture, and continuity with the argument that assessment belongs at sea. Hitch, our Seafaring Intelligence, holds the questions mariners ask underway and marks assessments when they have been properly assessed. The judgment and the signature stay with the human officer. Hitch keeps the record straight.

Education is free. The tools to get the credential often are not. We publish curriculum for adult mariners to study. We do not sell access to the books. We are actively becoming Coast Guard–approved — in process through NMC pathways, and from there possibly other nations. The Coast Guard still sets the credential rules. North 37 prepares and organizes — free curriculum, honest tools, active pursuit of approval, and train-the-trainer that belongs on the water.

This academy is a group project. We need more teachers. Captains, mates, tankermen, ABs, deckhands — mariners who can teach and assess — are invited to join. Bring what you know. Help improve the train-the-trainer path. Stand watch with us while we become USCG-approved and strengthen assessment at sea. If that sounds like the kind of academy worth building together, join us. Bring your questions. Keep your standards high. Keep the proof where the work is done.

Fair winds,

Wayne
Founder, North 37 Maritime Academy
Lexington, Virginia · north37.academy