Hey guys maybe some of you are working or have worked in Brazil with Chouest or HOS, Some guys would like to have
an ideas on working conditions, hours and the daily rate for Captains, And Engineers?? ANY IDEAS OR INFO??
[QUOTE=pacificg;76625]Hey guys maybe some of you are working or have worked in Brazil with Chouest or HOS, Some guys would like to have
an ideas on working conditions, hours and the daily rate for Captains, And Engineers?? ANY IDEAS OR INFO??;)[/QUOTE]
Alot will depend on which boat you get on and how the contract is written. They are all a little different. If you get to keep the whole American crew, it will be tolerable. If you wind up with just a coulple american officers and the rest of the crew brazilian, IT WILL BE THE MOST MISERABLE EXPERIENCE IN YOUR ENTIRE EFFING LIFE.
Parts and supplys are hard to get down there, even basic stuff like racors, and degreaser. Support is almost unheard of unless you fly them in from another country.
Most companies will pay 10 to 20% more than standard wages in the gulf, or some just give a flat 50 bucks a day extra for going down there.
I did a year and a half down there and I get hives just thinking about it.
[QUOTE=ChiefRob;76630]Alot will depend on which boat you get on and how the contract is written. They are all a little different. If you get to keep the whole American crew, it will be tolerable. If you wind up with just a coulple american officers and the rest of the crew brazilian, IT WILL BE THE MOST MISERABLE EXPERIENCE IN YOUR ENTIRE EFFING LIFE.
Parts and supplys are hard to get down there, even basic stuff like racors, and degreaser. Support is almost unheard of unless you fly them in from another country.
Most companies will pay 10 to 20% more than standard wages in the gulf, or some just give a flat 50 bucks a day extra for going down there.
I did a year and a half down there and I get hives just thinking about it.[/QUOTE]
Please more details of life aboard vessel on working and living with Brazilian crew
A friend of mine bought an apartment in Brazil and lives there all winter during his time off. He absolutely loves it.
I am thinking about doing something similar. I also like the idea of working and living someplace nice, warm, and inexpensive overseas and not having to pay any income tax on the first $92,000.
[QUOTE=sailcapt;76649]Please more details of life aboard vessel on working and living with Brazilian crew[/QUOTE]
Brazil has something sililar to our Jones act. The problem is there are not enough Brazilian flag boats to handle everything that is going on down there. That is why they are letting foreign flag boats work there. Most of the time they will make it a requirmet to have a certain number of Brazilian crew onboard even the foreign flag boats. Alot of time the company will leave just an American Captain, engineer, and if you are lucky a mate. The Brazilians have a very strong maritime union that protects them. They are IMHO very lazy to start off with, then they have a union that protects them to the point where it is possible to fire them, but it is very, very, very, very, very diffucult. You can only guess what happens when you have a lazy person that can’t get run off, and then does not care about anything, considers you to be a P.O.S. for being American. Then you are left with 2 or 3 people running a boat that should have 10.
A good friend of mine is down there right now on a drill ship. I won’t name names, but this drill ship should have 180 man crew on it. The company let the contract get wrote where 80% are Brazilians. So they are running a 600 foot drill ship down there with about 25 people that actually know what they are doing or even care. It makes it very hard on the poeple that are actually doing the work to have to take 3 or 4 other people place and there slack.
The food sucks, get used to eating ox tail and french fries everyday. and it is just dirty down there. Rio is nothing but a big getto. There is about 2 or 3 blocks that are nice around Coco Cabana, and Impanema beach, the rest of that city is like you just got off at the wrong exit in NYC, looked around and said O O I know I just screwed up.
[QUOTE=tugsailor;76660]A friend of mine bought an apartment in Brazil and lives there all winter during his time off. He absolutely loves it.
I am thinking about doing something similar. I also like the idea of working and living someplace nice, warm, and inexpensive overseas and not having to pay any income tax on the first $92,000.[/QUOTE]
If you like wild night life and spending alot of money at the cat house it is good for that. I have know several people that have fell in love and moved down there with there new fine ass girl friend. I just depends on what you are interested in. I did my slavery time down there. I would rather work in west Africa. You have any idea how bad it has to be for somebody from Alabama to say that.
The time on the beach is usually fun, and there is alot of trouble to get into down there. However the month or 2 you spend on the boat or ship is absolute misery. Just about every one I know that has spent any amount of time actually working there says the same. I am not saying I will never go back to work down there, but I will have to be way hard up and need a job some kind of bad.
Thanks ChiefRob any body Else care to chime in
If you are looking for a cheap place to live Brazil is not it! I hope I never go back to work. I had to basically hitch hike from the boat as they refused to let us go to the dock because it was not a local crew change day. Lucky for me I happened to know someone from another company and jumped on them to get in as they passed heading to port.
I can add little to what ChiefRob has already stated other that I have worked with Brazilian males and I simply loathe them. They’re worse than horrible to be aboard a ship with…period!
foda-se e morrer idiotas preguiçosos
Spent eight months working out of Niteroi (Rio). Sixteen person crew. American Master, 2nd Capt, Mate & C/E. Russian 2nd Eng. Nine Brazilian crew and two translators. After a shaky first hitch. The crew turned out to be one of the best I’ve ever worked with. Food is good if you get the right cook. I have nothing but good to say about that crew. The long miserable flights down, and general lack of organization with transportation etc. , sucked big time. Very hard to get spares or anything repaired. I’d work with that crew again, but I’d rather not do it in Brazil!
Thank you all for the good information either good or bad… But keep it coming guys… How about communication? Email? Internet? Phone? We are curious if all the boats ECO, HOS
has internet? Or How much would you spend on communicating with your family here in the U.S. How about RATEs?
[QUOTE=pacificg;76690]Thank you all for the good information either good or bad… But keep it coming guys… How about communication? Email? Internet? Phone? We are curious if all the boats ECO, HOS
has internet? Or How much would you spend on communicating with your family here in the U.S. How about RATEs?[/QUOTE]
The rates for ECO and HOS have already been beat to death on here. As I said what ever position you are sailing as, generally add 10 to 20% over what you would make in the gulf.
I have friends down there with both companies, internet works, it is a little more spotty than here in the states, but it does work.
The ship I was on never came to the dock, sometimes we would anchor in the harbor in RIO. The only time I was on land was crew change day, so I never made a phone call the entire time I was there, just internet, I was able to use skype though form the ship internet, spotty but it worked.
Pacificg -
As stated by others, the crew will be onboard any US flag vessel will be 70 or 80% Brazilian. The Brazilian officers are mostly affiliated with the union “SINDMAR.” The rest of the Brazilian crew are not union members, but they are protected by very strong laws which favor the employee in almost any dispute. For this reason, it is almost unheard of for any Brazilian employees to be fired. The most you can hope for is to have problem crewmembers transferred from your vessel to another vessel. That said, the Brazilain wages are very good, so some crewmembers do work hard and are anxious to learn and perform their duties.
Shoreside, the problems are the same. For every foreign employee they bring in, your company will be required to employee X number of Brazilians at the same position levels. If your company has hired bad vessel coordinators, managers, or technicians, they are pretty much stuck with what they have unless they can convince them to quit. Despite the best intentions of your company’s management, they simply will not be able to provide you the parts, supplies, and technical support in Brazil that they are able to provide in their GoM or other foreign operations.
Brazilian crew work even time. Mostly 4 weeks on and 4 weeks off. They are salaried and will receive a total of 14 months pay per year. If required to work over, they will be paid double for their extra time. As an American, your most common rotation would be 8 weeks on and 4 weeks off. Most companies in Brazil will allow you to stay and work much longer rotations if you prefer that. Some do allow equal time scheduling, but they will try to squeeze longer hitches out of you if possible to cut down on their own transportation costs.
As for living conditions onboard the vessels, it is not quite as good as what you would expect in the GoM. First of all, most companies are reluctant to send their nicest and newest equipment to Brazil when they can just as easily charter their older vessels there for top dollar instead. And, with the crew and supply problems, the maintenance and general cleaning of the vessels also suffers in Brazil. Some vessels are equipped with V-Sat units, but when they break, repairs can take a long time to be completed properly. Vessels that come and go frequently are often supplied only with cellular modems for internet service. They work ok at the port and anchorage in Macae, but are utterly worthless when your vessel is offshore or anchored in Rio de Janeiro. Likewise, cell phones are utterly worthless in the port of Rio de Janeiro as well. (There are too many towers and as the phones skip back and forth to the “nearest” - the calls drop repeatedly.)
Food onboard can be hit or miss between the vessels. The budgets for groceries is actually quite generous, but what your cook ends up doing with the food he receives can vary greatly. Yes, ox tail, cow tongue, chicken hearts (delicious), and liver are some of the favored local dishes. And, beans and rice will be served with every meal. But the cooks are professionally trained chefs and most are willing to provide a second selection for the foreigners. If you treat the cooks with respect, most will take care of you.
As stated by others, Brazil is, generally speaking, NOT a cheap place to live. Sure, some apartments can be had for cheap, but if you want to live somewhere safe and clean, you can expect to shell out some serious money to make that happen. Cars, fuel, insurance, hotels, and restaurants are all expensive. Groceries are cheaper than the US, but that’s about it. That said, yes Foreign Earned Income Exclusion ($95,100 for 2012) and Housing Exclusion (Varies by location) can make the decision to live in Brazil (or any other foreign country) an attractive choice for some if you are willing to stay out of the US for 11 months each year. But, keep in mind that when your work visa expires, you will most likely be required to leave Brazil for the 3-4 months that the renewal takes to process. In short, it is not as easy as it seems, to take advantage of that tax loophole.
I do not know about all companies, but ECO pays full transportation costs for its employees door to door and pays the day rate for those travel days as well. They currently pay all employees working outside the GoM an extra $20/day, but they do not pay into Social Security while you are working outside the GoM.
In short, as someone who has been there and done that, I would concur with most of the others that the $$ and adventure of it all is absolutely NOT worth it for most people. But, of course, YMMV.
The food is awful. Somehow the hamburgers we had tasted like hot dogs. Explain that one to me.
Thank you guys for responding to the question… At least now all of us has an idea on what not to expect when you go work in Brazil. Thank you for sharing your experienced. If anyone out there that would
like to comment on this subject, please feel to post your experiences in working in Brazil or somewhere else. Thank you. Chief Rob and Acaptain for the info.
I like ox tails.
[QUOTE=Xavier6162;76769]I like ox tails.[/QUOTE]
Well I guess everyone has some kind of weird fetish
I also like Jell-O, biscuits and gravy, grits, peanut butter and jelly, mayonnaise, SPAM, frito pie, SOS, bologna, [B]hotdogs[/B], chili, corn flakes, corn dogs, [B]Buffalo Wings,[/B] sweet potato and pumpkin pie too. I’m full of weird fetish loving.
How does ECO get people to go to Brazil for only an extra $20 per day date rate, but no contribution to social security. That sounds like a net (pay and benefits) cut and less money than working in the Gulf.
Is it true that the Brazilian crew makes about double the pay of the American crew?
[QUOTE=New3M;76732]The food is awful. Somehow the hamburgers we had tasted like hot dogs. Explain that one to me.[/QUOTE]
Young feller, there are some things in life it is just better to not have the answer to!!!