Helicopter Survival Course (HUET)

For every occupation of serious note there are usually a number of courses, conferences or weekend getaways that are supposedly designed to improve the knowledge of, share knowledge of or distribute knowledge of the job in hand. In some cases these courses or self-improving days out of the office or factory floor do give new life and meaning to an otherwise day in, day out job. For many the courses are a required part of the job, for promotional reasons or simply without doing the course they are unemployable, and for others it is a means to better themselves.



In other cases these courses, conferences (call them what you may), have the effect of gelling together a serious bunch of alcoholics and piss-heads who' see no other reason for their presence than to drink the local pub dry. These confirmed merry-makers within three days after the event will have no recollection of the course itself - apart from the good times they had in the pub and the hangovers felt during the day.



For seafarers courses have started to intrude big style into an already stressful work place. Laws of the sea require that anybody who sails on a merchant vessel must have a basic prerequisite number of certificates and that these must be updated every five years. As a brief outline, a couple of mainstream courses exist that all must do and in short they are as follows. A two-day course on how to put out the fire that started from the Captain smoking in bed. A four-day course on how to survive at sea when stuck in a little rubber boat because the larger one has done a Titanic on them. And another two-days on how to successfully do an appendix operation with a chisel and hammer when halfway across the Atlantic Ocean and a final course on how to keep healthy at sea.



These are the basic courses for anybody considering a career at sea from an Engineer on a tug to a hairdresser on the QE2. But for the professionals of the business who are further up the ladder than the first rung have to broaden out and attend courses till they are pouring out of the ears. Four day flame-extinguishing course's rear their heads were normally calm and positive sailors are forced into pitch-black containers filled with smoke and flames and are made to crawl around on their hands and knees through red-hot tunnels and small doorways. Safety Management and character building courses test seafarers patience to keep the eyes open as some boring expert tells you what sort of person you are - as if this is a new finding.