Sounds like practically every tanker sailing these days. Hell, there are some crews on VLCCs and ULCCs that go even longer than that without even stepping foot on dry land. Welcome to the career they chose. As we said at Texas Maritime, I-45 runs both ways and you can quit any time.
You cut off the rest of the sentence there chief
Fair enough… I’m an MSC contractor on a 30/30 rotation… 14 days after my hitch, I’m in quarantine… then I go into ROM for 14 days before going back. I get 2 days out of my house on my time off for socialization. So? It’s the career and kind of billet I signed up for 25 yrs ago when I became a cadet. I knew it wasn’t all south seas scantily clad native maidens with leis welcoming the ship and its cargo. I’m compensated with a handsome day rate and Covid won’t last forever.
Going to be really blunt and say that I’d rather they show they can’t hack the stresses of this career back at the academy than on my ship.
You’re saying you want cadets to commit suicide at their maritime academies rather than on your ship?
You’re a sick puppy if you read his comment & your brain processed it to mean what you suggest.
I don’t know how else to interpret that given we are talking about suicide
99.9999% of cadets who wash out due so by other means than suicide?
“Going to be really blunt” was the key to the meaning of what he wrote. Let’s hear from him what he meant by that.
Well, as much as l like standing up for the little guy, I have to agree with these posters, quality of life in the fleet is no better than it is at the academies currently. We don’t get to do anything, go anywhere, or see anybody. Do your hitch and shut up is what we are told. So there is no solace currently to offer the cadets. I am very sad to hear about suicides or attempted suicides and any and all cadets with mental health issues should seek help and definitely drop out if that’s what’s needed to save their life.
That is what I said, so Yes.
I do not equate returning veterans and active military who survived multiple deployments and combat to kids signing on to what amounts to a free education.
As far as the requirements of incoming Plebes to adhere to; which one(s) got your panties on a bunch. The “motivated shuffle” (whatever that is), not wearing their backpacks, having to wear the UOD, completing their assigned cleaning stations EVERY morning, No vaping, No fraternization or relationships (per Middy regulations)? Or is it God forbid, no phones, the horror.
All the plebe rules are rigid at any service academy or senior military academy. It’s known and agreed to when you sign up. So yeh, that stuff in and of itself is not a valid complaint.
Jesus you’re a sick fuck if that’s what you took from that.
No. I’d rather they figure it out at the academy and pack their things and go find a different degree to get a nice safe cubicle farm job and living a full life instead of getting out to the fleet and deciding that the only solution to the stress is to suck start an M9 in the bridge. Just to verify, everyone is aware of the 3/M on the Earhart that wasn’t properly prepared for what they were getting into prior to graduation right?
Ok, so to clarify: you are saying you would rather someone at an academy who is struggling with depression leave the academy and enter a different line of work rather than stay, graduate, enter the fleet, wind up on your ship, and then commit suicide while aboard.
You forgot to include the part about living a full life.
True. Does that mean going to sea is inevitably less than a full life?
The answer to that question doesn’t have a correct answer. Its different for each individual. Some people never step foot on a ship & might live lives they feel is unfulfilled.
Truth!
I am very empathetic with these young people who feel trapped and depressed, but at least there is a gate they can exit and go home if the going gets too tough. There are seafarers around the world who have been held over for months, unable to return home. Try a year on a ship with no relief. That is the vast majority of shipping now.
If they joined the MM to traipse around in foreign ports, they are about 30 years too late, anyway. Even in good times, most deep sea cargo ships pull into a terminal in some industrial area and you are lucky to get a ride to Walmart, if anything. You can’t get off even in many US ports.
Did 16 months on one ship, had a great time.
Going through that gate at a federal academy is $250k give or take, though. At least on a ship at sea you are physically isolated and engaged in meaningful work instead of staring at the walls of your dorm room without so much as a CD player in between getting hazed by the regiment or whatever dreary shit. As an American seaman you’re even stacking bank doing it, you hopefully have good shipmates, etc. The thought of being locked in a dorm room in a regimented academy as a plebe sounds hellish in a way that making a thousand bucks a day for a mind-boggling number of days doesn’t.