Maritime Competence: The 70-20-10 Rule
The 70-20-10 rule of skill development reveals a hard truth: only 10% of learning comes from classrooms and courses, 20% depends on mentorship, while 70% happens through real work. Shipping has overfed the 10%, while learning through the 70% is left to chance. This leads to skill-gaps that result in detentions, claims, accidents, and observations. Can we bridge that gap—such that mentorship and experiential learning are part of daily operations, making competence measurable at sea?
 Know your Pilot Ladder
NAVGUIDE
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What’s New With Navguide?
Navguide was honoured to be invited by Intertanko to present at its Associate Members’ Committee meeting in Athens on the 21st of January 2026. We presented our unique approach to Staying SIRE 2.0 Ready—Guide2Inspections—a system now used by hundreds of vessels for SIRE 2.0 or RightShip-preparations. The uniqueness lies in its focus on developing a compliance culture on board, while imnprovement is inspection results is one of the many outcomes.
With RightShip’s new inspection regime around the corner, our application is now up to date with RISQ 3.2.
60-second insights
4th Engineer Brian is about to enter the Engine Room. The Second Engineer had briefed yesterday - they are planning to work on the auxiliary boiler today. Brian joined a month back and wants to prove his competence to his seniors before asking for a promotion.
A week later, Brian enters the training room to complete a course on the Auxiliary Boiler. This is mandated before his next assignment.
Where do you think Brian learnt more about the Boiler?
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What forms the basis of a successful SIRE or RightShip inspection?
1. A Mentorship Culture | 2. Well-made Checklists
3. Third-party supervision | 4. The Luck factor
Streamlining Inspections
by Capt. Debashis Basu
Our January LinkedIn poll was a very interesting one. We asked what takes the most time during the vessel inspection process, & the results were very insightful.
Only 36% voted that it was the actual act of inspection. The rest declared that it was the ancillary jobs surrounding the inspection, e.g. typing out the report, reducing image file sizes or referring to the regulations.
Maritime Inspectors are senior professionals who are highly paid and hired for a specific skill set. If we were to go by the above poll, it turns out we are using much of their time on seemingly mindless, often clerical jobs, rather than on having that sharp eye to detect non-compliances. A Master I spoke to stated that during a recent remote inspection, he took more time trying to resize images and fit them to a report format than the actual inspection.
Technology, as I have stated on several platforms (like this), always had only one job - to make our lives simpler. Our flagship App Guide2Inspections was made with that one thought in mind. An Inspection app so seamless that, within two clicks, you start an inspection, it guides you with reference regulations popping up on demand, a report gets populated while you carry out your round, and photos get auto-compressed into a decent file size. All this, while working offline! So we can see the day when an inspector just inspects - technology does the rest.
