My experience when I went through the SWO course (never mind how long ago that was...) was that there were useful experiences in there, but a lot could have been cut. The most useful experience I remember was actually driving YP craft (YP stands for "yard patrol") from Newport up to Massachusetts Bay and back, with us junior officers taking turns manning all of the bridge crew positions, including those that are manned by enlisted sailors on a combat ship. That's something a junior officer won't get to do on a combat ship, and it was quite an eye opener for many of us. It also let us encounter a lot of situations similar to the ones that caused these collisions (we transited the Cape Cod Canal, both ways, which is quite narrow and quite crowded, as are the approaches to it on both sides) under the supervision of experienced sailors and officers.