Pathways to Employment

Lifestyle While Working in the Maritime Industry

Lifestyle Overview

Would you pass up a job that is challenging, pays you to travel the world, and gives you months off at a time? If you didn’t think such a job exists, you are wrong! Working in the maritime industry affords many people that exact lifestyle. To be honest, once you have had that lifestyle, it is difficult to go back to the normal 9-to-5 type of gig. There are a lot of people that get used to the sailing schedule and come to enjoy it. Many so much so that they often go back to actively sailing after some time working shore-side.

Lifestyle Perks

As stated above, there are a few awesome perks of working on ships for a living, so let’s jump right in and talk about a few of them below:

Vacation Time

First and foremost, there is very few other career fields, if any, that afford you the amount of time off that the maritime industry does. Depending on who you work for, the average amount of time off every year is 6 MONTHS. Yes, you read that correctly. This is because, for every day worked, it is typical to earn a day off (roughly). Again, this varies by company but is a generally a good rule-of-thumb.

This affords the mariner the ability to learn new skills, take classes, and go on vacations all around the world during a vacation. There’s nothing like stepping off the ship after working your ass off for months at a time knowing that you have months of paid vacation ahead of you. In a few situations, you can even save up your vacation time instead of using it. There are some people I know who have managed to accrue literally YEARS of vacation time and keep it on the books for a rainy day.

Pay

A second benefit of working onboard ship’s is the pay. I usually tell people that the pay essentially doubles if you decide to go offshore with your job. This is to say that, if you happen to be working a job that is also needed on ships, if you decide to do the same job you currently have but do it as a crew-member on a ship, your pay will essentially double. Of course, this can’t be applied to every situation as it all depends on the company you end up working for and the position you’re filling.

Speaking of pay, how does it work?

With the amount of money mariners make, they usually aren’t going to starve. That is of course if they don’t blow their money on unnecessary things, which, unsurprisingly, happens a lot. What is that saying? Dirty hands equal clean money? Well, as a mariner (especially an engineer), your hands will always be dirty, at least when you’re at work. Below I’ll go through some scenarios about how pay will work depending on who a mariner is working for. Of course, these examples will apply to sea-going positions.

Oil Rigs

Typically, an Oil Company (when it comes to their oil rigs) will pay its employees a straight salary. The typical schedule for an Oil Rig ranges from 2 weeks on/2 weeks off up to 8 weeks on/8 weeks off, and anywhere in between. This is to say that the company will transport the mariner out to the rig, wherever it is at in the world, the worker will then work their 2 weeks (or however long their contract says) then the company will transport the worker back to the home of residence, where the employee will be free to do whatever they want in their off time.

Private Shipping Companies (Unions)

Many mariners are Union members. I would guess there are somewhere around 7-10 large maritime unions in the United States for both Licensed and Unlicensed mariners. Private shipping companies that own cargo ships and oil tankers have contracts with these Unions, who then supply the companies with the personnel who are licensed/certified to operate their ships.

In the situation described above, pay and vacation time can vary. Mariners typically work for a daily wage and overtime rate (negotiated between the companies and the unions). Overtime (OT) is where mariners make most of their money, and it is usually the case that a certain amount of OT hours are allotted to each mariner each day, should they choose to work those overtime hours. Although OT is not required of mariners (technically), it is generally frowned upon if a mariner does not work his or her OT hours as there is a lot of work to do and, most of the time, those OT hours need to be worked to get the work accomplished.

With a Union gig, a mariner goes through a process with their respective union to be provided a job with a ship. The mariner then works on the dates specified in the contract (usually anywhere from 2 weeks to 4 months) then goes back on vacation to repeat the process when they want to go back to work. Vacation days are earned typically at a rate of 1-to-1 for their time onboard a ship (again, this can vary). This means that, as stated before, for every day worked, a day off is earned. Thus mariner will usually get off a ship and have anywhere from 2 weeks to 4 months (YES you read that correctly) of vacation saved up, which they can use as they wish (according to how each union lets each members spend their paid vacation time).

Once vacation time is used up, the mariner can either go back to the union to look for a job or keep taking time off but not have it be “covered” as vacation time. A lot of mariners I know use this process to only work for 3 months a year and then take the rest of the year off. Which is an AWESOME lifestyle.

Non-Union Private Companies

Some companies that own ships choose to directly hire their mariners as opposed to hiring mariners supplied by Unions. For mariners in this situation, the pay in this situation is mostly salary and it will usually be even time on and off the ship, usually in the range of 1-3 months on board, followed by 1-3 months of vacation, depending on the ship and the company.

Lifestyle Drawbacks

Since I’ve talked about the perks of the sea-going life, I guess I might as well talk about some of the drawbacks as well, so I’ll go over some of those here:

Schedule

...I know I know, you might be saying, “Didn’t he list the schedule as a perk before?” Yes, I did, but it is also a drawback as you are gone for long periods of time. So, depending on how you look at it, being gone for months at a time may not be ideal when it comes to your personal life and relationships. It takes a certain type of person to be able to put up with being on a ship for long periods of time and being out of cell phone range with barely any or not any internet. Think about it, when was the last time you didn’t have internet access or cell phone service? Mariners deal with this constantly and it can get old both for the friends and family shore-side as well as the mariner.

Health

I’ll speak about this from an engineering perspective since I am an engineer. Being on a ship is terrible for your health. The first thing I will say about this is, again, the schedule. Ships are busy, heavily industrial work environments. Here are some of the drawbacks

No days off - Yes, this means that if a mariner is working a 4-month contract (aka hitch) that means working 120 days straight, mostly 15-hour days at least.
Little sleep – especially if you are a watch-stander working outside normal working hours or duty engineer with alarms going off all night.
Metal decks – Walking miles every day up and down stairs on unforgiving metal decks will generally wear out joints after years of abuse. It Is uncommon to see a senior, experienced Engineer that is in good physical condition.
Food – Ship’s generally don’t have the same high-quality food that is available shore-side. Although some ships do try to provide higher-quality foods when available, the food provided while at-sea is often low-quality, processed garbage.

Recap

In this article, we went over some of the benefits and drawbacks of the mariner lifestyle. I could go on for hours about this topic, but for people who don’t have any prior experience in the maritime industry, this is a good overall description of those benefits and drawbacks. If you’re a mariner and have some opinions about this or are not a mariner but have any further questions or want to know more, feel free to send us a message and we will get back to you ASAP!