Princess cruises

[Greig]

So, princess cruises offered me a 3rd Officers position back in the summer however I turned them down.
I'm now sitting on watch in the middle of the North Sea, approaching winter, wondering... did I make the right choice? I'm 21 years old, i think I may be missing out on the travel and good weather.
Are any of you working in the cruise industry? What's your experience?

[EH75]

What kind of offshore vessel you on? That's the key question eh? Wouldn't fancy standby but wouldn't mind trying out PSV, Anchor handlers etc

Aye, you miss out on the sunshine but you'll be getting paid more and getting home more often (I assume). Positives and negatives to everything eh?

I've been offered a job on cruise but not started yet. Looking forward to it but more money and time off would always be nice. Can't have it all I guess.

[Martyboy]

I've never sailed on a cruise ship, but I loved being out on the anchor handlers in the north sea in Jan :P I'd stick with where you are truth being told

[Greig]

What kind of offshore vessel you on? That's the key question eh? Wouldn't fancy standby but wouldn't mind trying out PSV, Anchor handlers etc

Aye, you miss out on the sunshine but you'll be getting paid more and getting home more often (I assume). Positives and negatives to everything eh?

I've been offered a job on cruise but not started yet. Looking forward to it but more money and time off would always be nice. Can't have it all I guess.

Yeah, that's true you cant have everything!
I done my cadetship on standby boats - never again.
I'm on a PSV, been here for a year and a half now, getting a bit bored, another year and a half and i'll have my time in for chief mates.
What vessels have you worked on before?

[EH75]

Cadetship on containers. This'll be first job as an OOW. Looking forward to something a bit different. Containers got very boring very quickly.

[Greig]

Cadetship on containers. This'll be first job as an OOW. Looking forward to something a bit different. Containers got very boring very quickly.

Top job man, you'll have to let us know how you get on

[YoungMariner]

The money and the career opportunities are severely limited on cruise ships. That being said, whether you are considering being at sea long term or short term, it is a great way to see the world, have a good life and meet a future ex-wife. I enjoyed the few years I did on the cruise ships, I also learned a great deal. You get a lot of interesting voyages, you are in an out of port every day which is excellent experience as a watch keeper which the average offshore oil/deep sea guy isn't going to get. However, there are negatives amongst some of the politics.
You also need to consider do you have the DP Ticket? Are you ready for a pay cut and do you see yourself offshore long term?

[Greig]

The money and the career opportunities are severely limited on cruise ships. That being said, whether you are considering being at sea long term or short term, it is a great way to see the world, have a good life and meet a future ex-wife. I enjoyed the few years I did on the cruise ships, I also learned a great deal. You get a lot of interesting voyages, you are in an out of port every day which is excellent experience as a watch keeper which the average offshore oil/deep sea guy isn't going to get. However, there are negatives amongst some of the politics.
You also need to consider do you have the DP Ticket? Are you ready for a pay cut and do you see yourself offshore long term?

Haha, ex-wife xD I see myself coming ashore in 10-15 years time, i am getting good experience offshore at the moment however there's only so much you can learn on a supply boat, my captain thinks i'm starting to 'outgrow' my rank. I don't have my DP ticket yet, they system is installed but, there are hickups with the legal/paperwork side of things. My plan was to get my chief mates ticket with my current company (back to college this time next year), then start to look around cruise ships - maybe even yachts if they'll take me. I want to try passenger ships while i am young however getting my chief mates ticket asap is quite important to me so that takes priority methinks.

[EH75]

Yeah would probably stick where you are you've done chief mates. Having a chief mates ticket will maybe make it easier to move around into other jobs, plus when it comes to your chief mate orals etc if you have only been on standby since you qualified hopefully they will only ask you about that whereas if you jumped to passenger the now then you might get asked about both!

[Greig]

Yeah would probably stick where you are you've done chief mates. Having a chief mates ticket will maybe make it easier to move around into other jobs, plus when it comes to your chief mate orals etc if you have only been on standby since you qualified hopefully they will only ask you about that whereas if you jumped to passenger the now then you might get asked about both!

Yeah, that's what i was thinking.

On the note of coming ashore, does anyone have/thought about doing a degree?

[EH75]

Think theres a couple of people on here who did the whole top up thing where you can top up your foundation degree to a full degree by doing an extra year, although I think mostly people do that straight after their cadetship. If you do a search I think theres a couple of threads on it.

[TheSevenSeas]

I'm sure you made the best choice you could.

If you really care about having a lot of travel and good weather, I would recommend sticking with "duller", but better paying contracts and then using your leave periods and money earned from trips to take a holiday every now and then to somewhere where you really want to go and spending it exactly how you want. This is the path I chose and, in my opinion, it's better than working on cruise ships which some argue gives you more experiences onshore and is more fun.. (I disagree) where you are payed a lot less and given fewer weeks leave than most other sectors of the industry.

However your career ends up panning out... Good luck- you'll need it!

[GuinnessMan]

I'm sure you made the best choice you could.

If you really care about having a lot of travel and good weather, I would recommend sticking with "duller", but better paying contracts and then using your leave periods and money earned from trips to take a holiday every now and then to somewhere where you really want to go and spending it exactly how you want. This is the path I chose and, in my opinion, it's better than working on cruise ships which some argue gives you more experiences onshore and is more fun.. (I disagree) where you are payed a lot less and given fewer weeks leave than most other sectors of the industry.

However your career ends up panning out... Good luck- you'll need it!

I agree! It also means that you get to go where you want to go and spend more time there than just a few hours....

[MonkeyIslander]

the career opportunities are severely limited on cruise ships.

I've heard people say this before and I'm not sure why. Is it simply because there's not as many cruise ships knocking about as there are other ship types so it's harder to move about and, consequently, up?

[EH75]

Mostly to do with the large number of junior officers competing for promotions I would think. For example carnival have three 3/Os on each ship. Multiply that over the whole fleet and that's a lot of people potentially going for that promotion.