Ocean Navigation and Meteorology — Chief Mate Unlimited — Audio Course

On the first of October two thousand and fifteen, El Faro sailed into Hurricane Joaquin with every fact she needed to be somewhere else — and thirty-three people never came home. Your Chief Mate exam is built to make sure you'd have turned her around, and this course teaches ocean navigation and meteorology the way the examiners now test it: through the casualties, the worked plots, and the decisions.

Written to the new modernised MCA syllabus — the first audio prep built for the management-level digital assessment introduced in March 2026 and the Chief Mate oral that follows it.

Listen your way through the syllabus — on watch, on the drive to the crew house, in the gym. Narrated in a clear British voice built for long-form listening, structured so every chapter stands alone. Every chapter closes with five oral-style questions: pause, answer aloud, then measure yourself against the model answer.

What's inside (5 hr 5 min total):

• Introduction (3 min)
• Chapter One: The Ocean Passage (35 min)
• Chapter Two: The Engine of Weather (36 min)
• Chapter Three: Reading the Synoptic Picture (31 min)
• Chapter Four: Mid Latitude Storms and Heavy Weather (36 min)
• Chapter Five: Tropical Revolving Storms, The Anatomy (31 min)
• Chapter Six: Tropical Revolving Storms, The Escape (33 min)
• Chapter Seven: Weather Routeing and Voyage Optimisation (31 min)
• Chapter Eight: Ice (33 min)
• Chapter Nine: Ocean to Coast (35 min)

Real casualties throughout — the München, Fastnet '79, El Faro across two full chapters, Typhoon Cobra, the Endurance, Titanic re-read with modern eyes — because the sea's lessons stick when they have names on them.

Built for Chief Mate (Unlimited) candidates under the modernised MCA officer qualifications: the Navigation, Stability and Structure digital assessment and the Chief Mate oral.

Still preparing for your OOW? Start with the OOW Unlimited range — and grab the free COLREGs audio.