Hey everyone. Just wanted to see if there was anyone sailing on their license AND currently a military reservist not associated with the Strategic Sealift Officer program. I’m a Coast Guard reservist, looking to see if I can make the two career fields work out.
I am not currently a reservist, but the reason why I am no longer a reservist is because I chose my civilian career as a Merchant Mariner over the reserves. I was also in the Coast Guard Reserves and the units that I happened to be at where not to friendly when it came to me missing drills. It really all depends on your unit and if they allow you to make up drills and what not.
That’s my take on it. I’m currently IRR right now and it seems like there aren’t many reserve billets to begin with, especially since I haven’t declared a speciality. I was considering a transfer to SSO/MMR but don’t like the idea of having to report my employment/maritime status every year to the Navy.
Wouldn’t you have to switch services to do it.
Yeah. Inter-service transfer (IST)
It can be done, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
After graduating from CMA I spent three years on active duty in the Navy and became SWO qualified, so my designator became 1115. Once I left active duty I sailed on my license, but remained in the IRR. When I went ashore I became a SELRES (there are a lot of acronyms here, I must be talking about the Navy…). In my first unit we had a QMC who was actively sailing as mate with Crowley. The way he worked it was that he would flex drill, typically knocking out a three month set of drills over the course of a week at the reserve center. As a flex driller he was required to drill with the unit once each quarter. He was a good guy, but he was consistently ranked last come eval time. The reason? He was never around so the command didn’t know anything about him.
Moral of the story is, if you sail and drill at the same time you could seriously damage your military career. The benefit of the SSO/MMR type program is that you are in a community that understands you and won’t penalize you for being at sea.