COLREGS
To say that a thorough understanding of the Collision Regulations is essential to passing your oral exam would be an understatement. A wrong answer here or undue hesitation and you’ll be arranging a resit.
The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972 (updated 2016) is an IMO convention. Its’s regulations are incorporated into UK law by The Merchant Shipping (Distress Signals and Prevention of Collisions) Regulations 1996.
The good news is that, fundamentally, the Collision Regulations are fairly straightforward. They can seem daunting but, taken one rule at a time and then put together with plenty of practice, there’s no reason you can’t get them into your head. There is no shortcut to proficiency here.
Below you will find an index of our COLREG articles. As you can see, we’re still working on getting these online; eventually we’ll cover Rules 1-19. While they are also part of the COLREGs, we’ll index Rules 20-31 (Lights and Shapes) and Rules 32-37 (Sound and Light signals) on separate pages.