Seafarer Document Expiry Tracker

The big cycles: STCW certificates (Basic Safety Training, Advanced Fire Fighting, survival craft, etc.) revalidate every 5 years; the seafarer medical certificate is valid a maximum of 2 years (1 year for under-18s, and examiners can issue shorter); CoCs and their flag endorsements typically run 5 years; GMDSS GOC 5 years; passports 10 but with the 6-month-validity trap for many countries; visas on their own schedules (US C1/D up to 5 years for some nationalities, Schengen much shorter); yellow fever is now lifetime for most countries but some still ask. Each document is an independent clock — which is exactly why a matrix beats memory.

Because the operative deadline is the last sign-on date that keeps the document valid through the tour, not the printed expiry. A 9-month contract means anything expiring within ~10 months of joining is already a problem. Add renewal lead times — course seats for STCW refreshers, sea-service paperwork for CoC revalidation, visa appointment queues, medical exams — and 90 days is the minimum sensible runway. Crewing agencies routinely reject otherwise-perfect candidates over one short-dated certificate; mariners who manage their own 90-day window don't lose contracts to paperwork.

It depends on the document and the flag state. Some administrations allow a certificate that expires during a voyage to remain valid until the next port or for a grace period (the STCW convention lets flag states permit service up to the voyage's completion in defined cases), but port state control can still record deficiencies, and operators' policies are usually stricter than the legal floor. A medical certificate that expires at sea may be tolerated to the next port; an expired CoC endorsement is more serious. The practical rule: never plan a rotation that relies on grace provisions — they exist for emergencies, not scheduling.

PSC inspectors verify that the crew matches the Minimum Safe Manning Document and that each officer's CoC, flag-state endorsement, and supporting STCW certificates are valid and appropriate for the vessel and trade (tanker endorsements on tankers, GMDSS coverage, etc.), plus medical certificates. Findings range from recorded deficiencies to detention for serious cases — an invalid CoC endorsement on a required officer can stop the ship. Inspections under the Paris/Tokyo MoU regimes publish deficiency data, and crew-certificate findings remain among the most common categories. A clean, current document matrix is what a smooth inspection looks like.