Hello hello

[HarmlessWeasel]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently a music student about to finish my degree. I've become increasingly frustrated with the lack of career options and lifestyle in the world of classical music. While researching alternative career choices I came across the idea of joining the Merchant Navy. I don't have any merchant sailors in my family as far as I know. However I have a little nautical experience, having learnt to sail at uni, and loved every single minute of any time spent on the water or reading/fantasising about a life at sea.

I stumbled across this forum and thought it would be a great place to do some more research into things that the MNTB or Careers at Sea websites don't tell me. I'm interested in becoming a Deck Officer. I actually quite like the process of navigation insofar as I know it, which I hope is a good sign...

Hope to hear from some of you soon

Fergus

[mak]

Welcome to the forum, I'm sure there are plenty of people who'll sing the praises of the deck route on here...

[HarmlessWeasel]

I was going to say you must be an engineer, but then I saw your profile summary on the left...
Thanks for the quick reply, very impressed with the forum at the moment

[size4riggerboots]

Welcome Fergus! Yeah being a decky is pretty awesome, there's a lot of tea to be drunk and windows to be stared out of. However there's a lot of studying to be done before you get to put your feet up on that window ledge. (and you still have to get up to put entries in the log book and do compass errors). The watchkeeping/navigating stuff is the easy bit of the job though, there's a lot more to it than that, there's all the LSA and FFA to be inspected/tested/maintained/fixed, and when you reach the heights of C/O you end up with all the planning of cargo and stuff...

A lot of tea is drunk though, and there is much staring through windows. But don't let the ginger-beers tell you they work any harder, on my ship they seem to have 45 minute (at least) smokos morning and afternoon and as it's UMS they're on the aft end having a drinky by 1705 while us watchkeepers can only look at them on the CCTV and go green with envy.

[Chiefy]

that smacks of bad planning, they havent knobbled the aft end cctv :-)

[HarmlessWeasel]

haha good to know. I'd have to seriously reconsider if there wasn't any tea involved!
Well I don't mind the odd bit of studying, I think someone mentioned that it was good for me once, not sure if I believe them though. I need to catch up on acronyms though, what's LSA and FFA? I got as far as Life Saving ... and Fire Fighting ... I'm completely stumped on UMS though. To me that means Uniform Mark Scheme from my school days.

What's your favourite part of being a decky?

[thebrookster]

Appliance.

UMS - Unmanned Machinery Space - us engineers use this because we keep everything working so well we can afford the time off :P :P :P :P

[HarmlessWeasel]

ah gotcha. Thanks

although now I feel like you might be starting a fight with size4riggerboots. I'm gonna do my best not to get involved

[size4riggerboots]

LSA = Life Saving Appliances
FFA = Fire Fighting Appliances
UMS = Unmanned Machinery Space e.g. the engineers only work during the day leaving the ER un-manned over night. They have alarm systems which sound in the duty engineers cabin if anything goes wrong.

Favorite bit of being a decky... oooh toughie. Probably those nights when you have a clear sky, calm sea and can look up at the heavens and see everything, tis proper awe-inspiring stuff. Seen some amazing moonrises and sunrise/sets, seen a moon-rainbow, seen whales leaping and breaching, seen iceburgs 17 miles long and snow covered mountain ranges rising straight out of the ocean. I've been to New York, Halifax, Rome, Oslo, St Petersburg and many places in-between, I've been up and down the Caribbean countless times, through the Panama Canal and along the coast of Costa Rica, around the Greek islands and up the Marmara Sea to Istanbul, as far North as Alesund in Norway and as far south as South Georgia in the S. Atlantic. And I've not even covered half the places I hope to get to see! Next job might have to be in the Pacific...