Shorepass — MARINA review that takes less of your vacation

The science

Six things make a fact stay. The whole app is built on them.

There is no shortcut here. Nothing makes the exam easy. What these do is save your time. Each one makes a fact last longer for every hour you study. Doing this by hand, question by question, would take months. That work is already done.

Answer first. Then look.

Retrieval practice

Every mode asks you for the answer before it shows you one. Pulling a fact out of your memory makes it stronger. Reading it again does far less. This is one of the most tested findings in learning research.

Learn the look-alikes together

Discrimination training

Some questions look almost the same but have different answers. We find them across the whole bank and put them side by side. Then we name the difference. You cannot learn to tell two things apart if you meet them a week apart.

The word that decides it

Cue and key

Every question has a cue. Those are the words that tell you what is really being asked. And a key, the part of the answer that settles it. Your memory needs a handle to grab. A whole line painted yellow gives it none.

The odd detail

Distinctiveness

These papers have quirks. A strange word. A misspelling in one question and nowhere else. Odd details help your memory tell two similar questions apart, so we mark them for you instead of pretending the questions look different when they do not.

Mix the topics up

Interleaving

Finish one competency, then start the next. It feels tidy. It works badly. Mixing them feels harder and works better. The exam is mixed too, and picking which rule applies is a skill you have to practise.

Answer it fast

Fluency

Knowing the answer and knowing it in four seconds are not the same thing. A short timer trains speed. It also keeps slow and wrong apart, so you can see which one you are and watch your average drop week by week.

One promise about honesty. Sometimes we believe a common answer is wrong. We say so, and we give you the rule. Then we still teach the answer that scores, because that is what you need on exam day. You are told which is which.

What that buys you

Spend less of your vacation studying.

Nobody ever taught a seafarer how to study. You were taught what to know. The cost of that lands on the few weeks a year you are home.

Your time at home is short

Vacation means family. Medical. Agency. Papers to renew. And somewhere in there, an exam to prepare for. Advice that assumes three free months is written for somebody else. The real question is what to do with the two hours you actually get.

The ship does not prepare you for a paper

On board you look things up. You ask the Master. The book is right there on the shelf. In the exam hall you have none of that. Being good at the job is not the same skill as remembering it cold.

III

Re-reading feels like studying

Almost everyone does it, and it is one of the weakest ways to learn. Words you have read before feel familiar, and your mind reads familiar as known. You close the book sure of yourself. Then you cannot produce the answer, because you never once practised producing it.

You do not have to plan it

The hardest part is knowing what to study.

Most people open a reviewer at page one and work forward. That spends the same effort on what you already know as on what will fail you. The app decides instead, from how you have actually answered.

It names your three weakest topics

Not twenty. Three, on the first screen, each with a button that starts working it. That is the whole decision, made for you, every time you open the app.

The mock exam shows where you stand

It is scored the way the real one is scored. Each competency against its own line. It can tell you that you passed overall and still failed C1.

What you miss comes back

Questions you got wrong return. Questions you know cold stop taking your evening. You do not manage a schedule. You just answer the next one you are given.

Five ways to study

Five modes. Each one does a different job.

No review centre gives you one activity for four months. Neither do we.

Mixed

The main one. Topics mixed together, fully marked, with the look-alike of each question shown beside it.

Drill

One competency, worked until it holds. For the gap the mock exam just found.

Fast

A short timer on every card. Trains speed, and keeps slow apart from wrong.

Highlight

The reading pass. Cue, key, the odd detail, the look-alikes. For material you are seeing for the first time.

Mock exam

Built like the real paper. Real number of items per topic, real pass marks, real clock.

Your record

How accurate and how fast you are, topic by topic, over time. Not a score. It shows which topic will fail you while you can still fix it.

What we have seen so far

Our testers passed. Most of them in about a month.

That is what we built this for. Not to teach you more, but to make the same knowledge stick in fewer hours, so a short vacation is enough.

It is a small group. Shorepass is new. We will keep saying that until the number is big enough to mean something. A review centre that quotes a pass rate it cannot show you is one you should doubt. What we can show you is the method above, and the first competency free inside the app.

The mock exam

A mock exam that can fail you at 85%.

Because the real one can. Our papers follow MARINA's own exam permit: how many items each topic gets, and the mark each one must reach on its own. So it can tell you that you scored 85 overall and still failed C1. A printed reviewer can never tell you that.

That result is the most useful thing here. It turns four months of general worry into one sentence: this topic, this week.

1topic at a time, never the whole bank at once

20competencies, each with its own pass mark

5certificates: deck, engine, OIC-NW, OIC-EW, GMDSS

0internet permissions in the app

Built for a seafarer at sea

It keeps working when the signal stops.

Most study apps check your subscription every month. That is fine on land and useless at sea. Sign on for three months and the app you paid for locks you out in week five, a thousand miles from a tower.

No internet permission at all

This is not a promise to behave. The app cannot reach the internet, and its manifest proves it. Everything is settled once, when you enrol, in your browser.

Unlock once, then never again

Paste one line and it runs until your licence ends. Airplane mode, mid-ocean, a dead SIM. None of it matters.

Your record stays yours

Your answers, marks, notes and drawings stay on your phone. We never see them, because nothing is ever sent anywhere.

Get the app

Install it. Do C1 free. Then decide.

We ask for nothing first. No account, no email, no card. The first competency is simply open.

Android

Ready now, for phones and tablets on Android 8 or newer. About 19 MB.

Download for Android

Android will ask you once if it may install from your browser. That is normal for an app that is not in the Play Store yet. Read it, allow it for Chrome, and it continues.

iPhone and iPad

We are building it. Apple's review takes longer than Android's, and we would rather ship it right than early.

Tell me when iOS is ready

We will write once, when it is out. Your address is used for nothing else, and there is no list to unsubscribe from.

The download is safe to share, and we want you to. Everything a paying student sees is locked inside the file. Only a licence made for one phone can open it. So a copy you pass on is a free copy of C1 and nothing more. Send it to your batch.

Enrolment

One payment. One phone. Nothing recurring.

Pick the length that matches your time before the exam. The longer you take, the cheaper each month gets. Nothing renews by itself, and nothing fails to renew while you are away.

Shortest term

₱1,500 three months · ₱500 a month

Everything unlocked, every competency
All five modes and the mock exam
Works with no signal for the whole term
One payment. Nothing recurring.

Enrol for three months

A full contract · best value

₱5,000 twelve months · ₱417 a month

Everything in the shorter term
Covers a contract and a re-take in one payment
₱500 to renew the next year
Nothing to arrange from the middle of the Pacific

Enrol for a year

Any length from three to twelve months is on the next page, on the same falling scale.

Before you pay

One whole competency is free, forever.

C1 is open in every install. The whole topic, fully marked. Work through it and decide whether this way of studying suits you. We would rather you judged the real thing than a screenshot.

Open the app

Tap Unlock everything. It shows an eight-character device code. That code names your phone and nothing else. No serial number, no account, no personal details.

Enrol here

Type in that code and pay by GCash, Maya, card or online banking. PayMongo handles the payment. Your card never reaches us.

Paste the line back

You get one line of text, and a copy by email. Paste it into the app and it opens. That is the last time either of us needs a connection.

A licence belongs to a phone, not to a person. The line you get opens your phone and no other, so one payment is one phone. Register your details and we can give you a new one if your phone is lost or replaced.

Where the questions come from. Seafarers who sat the exam and passed wrote down what they remembered. We collected that, then checked it against the rules and books those questions come from. This is practice material. It is not a copy of any paper. Nobody has one of those, and anyone who offers you one is lying.