Never been any hate on bankers in this forum.
Actually nice to see some credible answers to this man’s questions for once. Thanks for shitting on this thread!
That said TShannon, being a deck officer even on a small ferry is way more stress than being a banker. What’s a bad day for you? Losing a few million and getting your ass chewed out by the boss? Being fired?
A bad day for us is having destroyed a vessel worth up to 10’s of millions of dollars, even a billion for some if you think about a drillship, somebody gets injured or killed, the environment has been destroyed, and I’m now going to jail for a long time and have huge fines to deal with. Plus now I’m all over the newspapers all over the world and despised by all. All while I was asleep in my bunk.
That’s not taking in account the dozens of spinning plates that an officer have to keep track of on a normal day to keep things running smoothly.
This is not the job one goes to looking for less stress.
As others have said if you like being on the water, best thing is to just downsize, buy your own boat and sail at your leisure.
If you’re still set on doing this, I think SUNY has a master program for guys to get their 3rd mate, engineer, but again you would have to deal with all citizenship requirements for a USCG license.
Your best bet would be to get your MMD stuff from the Canadian Government and go be a deckhand on a tug for a year and decide if this is really what you want to do. Scrubbing toilets and busting rust can help put things in perspective.
